The digital age demands a new approach to word-of-mouth marketing that actually gets results. Gone are the days of casually hoping people will talk about your brand. Today, you need strategy, creativity, and authenticity. Thanks to social media, the dynamics of word-of-mouth marketing have changed. The potential reach of a single positive recommendation is staggering. So how can you harness this power effectively? Let’s break it down.
The Power of Organic Social Media
Organic social media is a great place to build trust and authenticity. It’s where you can have genuine, unpaid interactions that form the bedrock of your of word-of-mouth marketing. While paid ads can grab initial attention, they often fall short in fostering the same trust that organic engagements do. Similarly, world-of-mouth marketing is even more valuable than a paid ad from user-generated content or an influencer.
Buzz Kits: Your Secret Weapon
Buzz Kits can help you turn passive followers into proactive brand advocates. They offer a blend of easy-to-share content—from infographics to quotes—designed to spark curiosity, create FOMO, and energize action. Think of them as a toolbox that your loyal followers will be excited to share.
So many members see the value of your event and offerings, but they don’t organically post unless they are guided to. A well-crafted Buzz Kit turns your audience into a marketing machine, distributing your message organically and spontaneously. For maximum impact, customize your Buzz Kits for various audience segments, such as members, board members, staff, event speakers, and registrants.
The Game-Changer: Social Media Takeovers
Social Media Takeovers disrupt your routine content by lending your platform’s voice to an influencer or enthusiastic member for a day or even a week. This approach doesn’t just broaden your audience but injects authenticity and novelty into your channel. It’s an invitation to see your brand through fresh eyes. A successful takeover can generate a surge of engagement and leave lasting impressions.
So much of social media marketing is about cadence and timing. If your base doesn’t see your ad, the ad can’t get results. But an extended takeover will help make sure your audience sees and engages with your message.
CASE STORY: We recently helped a client stage a week-long social media takeover to promote their annual conference. The results were impressive! The takeover generated 18,000 impressions, up 40% from the same week last year. It also garnered 1200 engagements and 457 clicks, each up about 100% over last year. Best of all, 250 people registered for the event in just that one week.
Engage via LinkedIn: The Professional Playground
LinkedIn has evolved into much more than a network for job seekers and recruiters. It is a place to connect, both personally and professionally, where you can build meaningful connections that convert into invaluable word-of-mouth marketing.
Leverage Personal Profiles
Personal engagement on LinkedIn is about humanizing your brand. Share authentic behind-the-scenes stories, professional challenges, and triumphs so you can engage with members and their victories. Showcase projects you’re working on so you can be seen as a leader in your space. When your audience sees the real faces and narratives behind your brand, they’re more likely to feel a deeper connection and become an advocate for you. This approach transforms your business from a faceless entity into a community of real people with compelling stories.
Maximize Business Profiles
On the business front, LinkedIn is an excellent place to showcase your credibility and expertise. Post thought-provoking content to create an image of authority and knowledge. In-depth articles, industry trend analyses, and case studies should make up the bulk of your LinkedIn strategy. This approach positions your brand not only as a participant in your industry but as a leader to whom others turn for guidance. Plus, you’ll get extra milage out of posts that mention members and their companies and projects. These help foster a professional relationship.
Showcase Value: More Than a Sales Pitch
Modern consumers are savvy; they’re not interested in being relentlessly sold to. They want to know how your product or service can add significant value to their lives. Your task? Show them in ways that resonate deeply and authentically.
Show, Don’t Tell
Turn testimonials and case studies into your brand’s storytellers. Let your base articulate how your offerings have made significant impacts or solved complex problems. When potential customers see these real-world applications, your value proposition becomes credible and compelling.
Connect Through Relatable Narratives
Facts and figures inform, but stories resonate. Craft your content around powerful narratives that highlight real-life impacts. Show potential members the tangible differences your solutions have made. This narrative approach creates interest and moves people to share these stories within their own networks.
The Final Insight: Make Meaningful Noise
In a digital world of constant noise, you’ll need more than a great event to generate word-of-mouth marketing that stands out. You’ll need to create a narrative people want to share. Aim to foster genuine connections, demonstrate real value, and maintain an authentic presence. Then let your audience do the rest.
Your messaging needs a day stopper, something so powerful it makes your audience stop what they’re doing, pay attention, and take action. The tired old refrain of “networking, education, and certification” just doesn’t pack enough punch in today’s busy world. A better strategy is to focus on business benefits.
Business Language is Better
Sure, people love your cause, your community, and the way you change lives for the better. But things like profit, strategy, M&A, growth, expansion, and competitive advantage are what keep them up at night—especially in a tough economy. If your marketing messages are missing this concrete business language, chances are you’re missing out on members, event attendees, and…well…revenues. See what we did there?
How to Develop Business Messaging
Use this questionnaire to evaluate your association’s resources and position them in terms of business benefits to your audience. The answers to these questions should show that your association is invaluable to the success of your members’ businesses. Ideally, they should also show just how much of a return on investment your members and event attendees get from engaging with your organization.
For each question, list specific resources, tools, services, and events that propel your audience toward growth and financial well-being. Do NOT list networking, education, or certification.
How does your association alleviate economic challenges for your members?
How do you save members from making costly mistakes?
How do you help members increase market share?
How do you help members grow and expand?
How might your organization help members reverse a decline in revenue?
List your top 3 most valuable resources. Then explain how each of these helps members drive profits.
The Things That Matter
An important takeaway is that people will always make time for things that matter. And quite often, money matters. Beyond that, you also need a human element to get attention and engage your base. Company leaders want their businesses to be successful. This is their baby and they will go above and beyond to see it thrive. Potential day stoppers you can use to tap into the human side of business include security, passion, ambition, status, prestige, pride, fear, anger, and many more. Here are a few emotionally compelling examples with a human element:
Security: Be confident you won’t have to lay off staff.
Passion: Do more good, change more lives.
Ambition: Be seen as the leader in your industry.
Anger: Legislators are making it harder for you to do business.
The Killer Combo
Any association can advertise networking, education, and certification. But if you want to gain a competitive advantage, attract more members, and boost revenues—all in support of your mission and cause—you’ll need a killer combination: business benefits plus compelling emotional appeals.
It’s time to get fired up about membership renewals!
Easier membership renewals happen when members see your association as more than a line item that can easily be cut from the budget.
Sure, you’re up against some challenges—people are busy, money is tight, and uncertainty hangs around every corner. But you’ve also got a lot going for you—people want to connect, they’re looking for solutions to their challenges, and they see your organization as the heart and homebase of their community.
This renewal season, focus on nurturing relationships, delivering value, and communicating that value to hit your numbers and minimize lapses.
Convince the Check Writer
Often, the people using your resources and attending your events aren’t the people paying your membership dues. The check writer doesn’t experience your value firsthand. This could spell trouble in a tough economy when that same check writer is looking to make budget cuts. Do you have a way of definitively showing the value of your association to someone who deals only in facts and figures?
One way to show value is to set up member engagement tracking. This will track where members spend time on your website, how many questions they ask in your forums, which events they attend, and more. It will also give you the ability to generate a report for each member to show them exactly what they got for the membership dues in the past year.
If you suspect your members aren’t taking full advantage of your association and the report will show a lack of engagement, start there. What can you do to entice people to lean in?
Speak to Trends and Pain Points
The best way to fuel member engagement and improve that report is to make sure your editorial calendar mirrors current industry trends and pain points. In short: Stay relevant.
You might think you’re already doing this, but are you really? What are you doing to look ahead? To innovate? Can you honestly say your members should renew every year because you have new, different, and amazing offerings they can’t afford to miss out on?
Relationships vs. Transactions
Once your content is on point, consider your relationship vs. transactional messages. How often are you asking your members to do something (e.g., pay dues, attend an event) compared to sharing valuable resources with no strings attached? In addition to the message itself, you’ll need to optimize how you package and deliver it so members see it and react.
Maintain Momentum
Don’t wait until September to start showing value. You must nurture relationships starting with onboarding and continuing all year long. New members are often enthusiastic initially but need a reason to maintain momentum. Think about the last subscription you paid for—maybe a gym membership or video streaming service. At first you’re thrilled and eager, but it’s all too easy to lose interest or forget about it entirely. If your members don’t see your value, they decide not to renew long before you reach out to them in the fall.
5 Proven Steps to Fuel Renewals
Once you have a solid strategy, it’s time for action. Here are five tried-and-true ways to get attention and move people to renew.
1. Segment: Divide your audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors. For example, large and small enterprises. Why? Because a one-size-fits-all message is the quickest route to the spam folder.
Purpose: To tailor your messages and offers to the specific needs and interests of each group.
Implementation:
Analytics: Use detailed analytics to understand member demographics, engagement history, and preferences.
Customization: Create specialized content and offers for different segments. For example, in-depth industry reports for seasoned members and orientation resources for newer members.
2. Use Technology: Tech is your ally. It can help streamline, automate, and enhance every aspect of your renewal campaign.
Purpose: To increase efficiency and member engagement through advanced tools and platforms.
Implementation:
Automated Email Marketing: Set up drip campaigns that adjust messaging based on member behavior.
CRM Systems: Use CRM software to track member interactions and personalize communications.
Analytics Tools: Employ data analytics to monitor engagement rates and refine your strategies.
AI Personalization: Use AI to offer personalized content recommendations based on past interactions. Highlight key features dynamically to maintain member interest.
3. Humanize: People connect with people, not with faceless entities. Humanizing your campaign makes it relatable and engaging on a personal level.
Purpose: To connect with members emotionally by showcasing the human side of your organization.
Implementation:
Member Stories: Share real-life testimonials and success stories that illustrate the impact of your organization.
Engaging Tone: Use a warm, conversational tone rather than corporate jargon. Focus on community, not transactions.
Visible Faces: Highlight team members and other faces of the organization to create a personal connection.
4. Offer Unique Benefits: You must give people something really good that they need that they can’t get anywhere else. Your value proposition must be crystal clear and compelling. This is what makes members decide to renew rather than lapse.
Purpose: To communicate the unique benefits of renewing membership.
Implementation:
Articulate Benefits: Focus on key pillars like brand value, community, networking, and personal growth.
Exclusive Perks: Offer exclusive access to events, valuable resources, and special discounts.
Clear Communication: Make sure members know exactly what they’re getting by renewing.
5. Remove Barriers: Even the most compelling offer won’t work if you don’t address the obstacles standing in the way of renewal.
Purpose: To identify and mitigate potential reasons for non-renewal.
Implementation:
Feedback Loop: Conduct surveys to identify common barriers like cost, time constraints, or perceived lack of value.
Address Concerns: Proactively solve these issues by offering flexible payment plans, showcasing clear value through success stories and benefits, and providing easy access to customer support.
Flexible Options: Provide a range of membership options to cater to different needs.
Renewals don’t have to be a struggle or a year-end scramble. Keep the focus on relationships and measurable value all year long. Use proven strategies and tactics to get more from what you’re already doing. You’ll will better serve and delight your members while also pleasing the check writer who ultimately makes renewals happen.
Chances are you’ve thought about the impact AI might have on your association this year, next year, in five years…There’s likely some apprehension as you wonder whether AI will replace your content, education, or other key offerings—at no cost to your potential membership base.
You’re right to be concerned. AI will no doubt get smarter, become even better at finding people’s pain points, and provide value you likely can’t even predict yet. But you also have a golden opportunity. You can embrace this new game-changing technology while you hone in on the unique value of your association.
The big question you’ll need to answer is this: Why would anyone pay your membership fees when they can access a universe of AI-driven value for free? The answer lies in the things AI can’t touch. Your community. Your advocacy. Your people.
Finding the “Almost”
AI will provide almost everything that your association can. Even today, it’s pretty good at content generation, data analysis, and education. If all you bring to the table is AI-level service with a “human-made” tag, you are already obsolete.
So, what about that elusive “almost”? When AI tools and resources mirror everything you do—only faster—will your members still see your worth? Can you define your value in that sliver of “almost”?
If you can’t answer these questions with a confident “YES!”, then you’re right to be concerned. It’s time to get ready.
How to Be Proactive
First, stop viewing AI as a handover to robots to ease your workload, and start leveraging AI to deliver unique value to your members. Position your association to embrace AI, not compete against it.
You might think, “Here we go with another tech panic.” You’re right to a degree. Apps and social media were hailed as member engagement godsends, and yes, they had their moments, but they didn’t shift the tectonic plates. Conference apps? Usually downloaded in a hurry.
Social media was once labeled the “email killer,” but now more emails are sent than ever before (not that this is a good thing).
The real power lies in leveraging AI to serve your members in ways you never could before. AI can help your association better understand your audience, refine event offerings, improve your administration, track and enhance your marketing efforts, build smarter chatbots, create better content, and so much more. Don’t compete—let AI amplify the human value of your association. This is how you stay ahead and lead, not just survive, in the age of AI.
Broadcast Your Unique Value
To successfully coexist with AI, you’ll need to know and articulate your association’s value. What is your unique edge? What does your association offer that AI can’t touch? Consider your advocacy, community, and connectivity. Now think harder. How strong will your community be in five years if AI makes LinkedIn even more powerful? If AI delivers education, expertise, content, and data crunching as good or better than your association, what’s left for you to do? If your members don’t see your value, it’s game over. Your value proposition must be ironclad. It isn’t just a statement—it’s your most powerful asset. Once you figure it out, shout it from the rooftops.
Pillars of Your AI Strategy
The next step is to amplify what makes your association irreplaceable—your brand, your voice, your tight-knit community. Strengthen your story, build your community, and clarify your advocacy. These are your pillars.
Let’s get tactical. Here’s how to bolster your foundation while thinking strategically:
Website: Overhaul your user interface. Think clean, intuitive, and lightning-fast. Simplicity outperforms an over-designed labyrinth. Consider an AI chatbot instead of a search bar.
Research: Conduct deep analytics to understand your members. How do people engage with your content? Which platforms and formats do they flock to? Can you prove your value objectively to justify your dues to the person writing the check?
Content: Create unique, helpful content that addresses member pain points and current or future industry trends. Make it scannable, digestible, impactful, and actionable to deliver maximum value.
Behavior: Recognize the seismic shifts in event registration behavior. Enter The 40-Day Dash—our tailored program acknowledging the last-minute registration frenzy. Get ahead of this curve and you won’t just survive; you’ll thrive.
The Here and Now
Don’t panic. But don’t stand still either. AI is here and it’s only going to get better and more powerful. Now is the time to find ways to move forward alongside AI while still enrolling prospects and renewing members. Expect some bumps along the way, and sure, your numbers might take a hit. But keep your focus razor-sharp on your core value for lasting success.
Future-Proof Your Association
It’s time to define what makes you irreplaceable. Let’s dive in, refine, and proclaim the “almost” into something powerful to futureproof your association.
It’s true that most people favor email as their preferred method of communication; it’s immediate and versatile. That said, this same flexibility often leads organizations, including associations like yours, to an over-reliance on transactional emails. Could your email strategy be overwhelming your audience rather than engaging them?
What We’ve Learned from Email Audits
Time and again, our audits reveal a common trend: most organizations, perhaps yours included, have a tendency to send out more transactional emails than those dedicated to building relationships—often at a ratio of 2:1. For instance, one client discovered that in a period of promoting events and membership campaigns, 71% of their emails were transactional, while only 29% focused on nurturing relationships.
This imbalance often results in communications that feel less humane and more directive—simply instructing subscribers to “buy” or “do” something rather than engaging them on a more personal level. We’ve got to start treating our audience like people, not just potential sales.
Comparing Transactional and Relationship Emails
Transactional emails have their place. They are essential for confirmations, reminders, and information about discounts. However, the problem arises when these types of emails dominate your communication strategy, reducing your members to mere transactions. This not only distances your audience but also increases the likelihood of your emails being disregarded or deleted with a simple thought: “Not today.”
Relationship-based emails prioritize building a meaningful connection with the recipient, whereas transactional emails focus on completing or confirming a specific action or transaction.
By strategically balancing these two types of emails, organizations can not only optimize their communication effectiveness but also foster stronger connections, enhance customer satisfaction, and potentially increase the lifetime value of their audience.
Transforming Your Email Strategy
How can you turn a standard transactional email into a relationship-building opportunity? Here are a few strategies:
Event Registration:
Instead of just pushing for registration, frame it as an invitation to an exclusive event where they can connect, learn, and grow. Share stories of past attendees who found significant value in participating.
Membership Renewal:
Replace a straightforward renewal reminder with a personalized appreciation message. Reflect on the tenure of their membership and highlight upcoming opportunities tailored for them.
Resource Promotion:
When promoting a benchmarking report, initiate a consultative conversation. Provide snippets of insights they could gain and discuss how these could address specific challenges they face.
Webinar Promotion:
Offer more than a simple discount—invite them to an exclusive learning experience designed to enhance their professional growth, adding a preview of the actionable knowledge they’ll gain.
Have You Evaluated Your Email Strategy Recently?
Too many transactional emails make people stop listening.
If you’re planning join and renew campaigns or simply aim to improve your communication, consider conducting an email audit. Compare your transactional vs. relationship emails and adjust accordingly to enhance recipient engagement and achieve better results.
Your Next Steps
Transactional emails serve a purpose, but remember, building lasting relationships will sustain your organization in the long run. Begin transforming your emails today to deepen connections and elevate your overall communication strategy.
For more insights into enhancing your communication impact, read our guide on optimizing email strategies here.
Transition your strategy from transactional to transformational with Rottman Creative’s expert insights and watch your member engagement soar!
Associations that have been around for a while—years, decades even—are doing a lot of things right. A word of caution, though. It’s easy to get complacent, to keep doing what’s always been done because it “works,” or because everyone is too busy to contemplate a better way.
See if this sounds familiar: Your association runs basically the same marketing plans year after year for membership and events. You have similar messaging and a similar value prop every time. You also have the same overall look and feel, the same offers, the same vibe. You might even cut and paste messages from years past into your current promotional materials. Maybe you’re short on time. Maybe you truly believe it’s hard to top a classic.
What You’re Leaving on the Table
Even if what you’re doing “works,” chances are you’re leaving something on the table: memberships, registrations, and non-dues revenue. Sure, you are getting members in your door and filling some seats at your events. But consider how many people might be tuning you out after all these years. And imagine how many more people are out there that your association could help and support if only they knew you existed. If only they knew how great and valuable your offerings are.
There’s an old business saying, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” It used to mean that if you don’t change, you’ll never grow. Nowadays, however, that’s a best case scenario. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll erode your brand. You could see a decline in your membership and event numbers until eventually your association ceases to exist.
It’s Time to Shake Things Up
It’s time to get more. To shake things up. To ensure your association will still be around for decades to come. Newspapers, print ads, and direct mail were once the backbone of a solid event marketing strategy. Then came email. And now associations are sending lots and lots of email. Too much email. Digital ads, AI, and automation are powerful new tools, but they’re also causing a noisy, always-on, information-overload culture that can actually decrease engagement. It’s essential to put your time and money behind the things that will do you the most good and lay aside the things that no longer serve you well.
How to Make the Right Changes
Don’t just change for the sake of change. Change is tough. It’s hard to get buy-in for new processes, ideas, and tools. You need to make the right changes. The most meaningful changes. The ones that stand to make the biggest difference in terms of your event and membership numbers and, by extension, your association itself.
Let the data tell you which changes to make. Track performance. Talk to your members to understand their current goals, fears, and pain points. Consider your options carefully. Don’t just jump on the latest digital trends. Think like your members and prospects and do what’s best for them—not necessarily what’s the easiest or most fun for your association. Approach challenges with boldness and scrappy determination to fuel members’ success and to secure the future of your association
What’s left? Closing the deal. Sealing both the inspiration and the intent with action.
We call the third and final phase of marketing The 40-Day Dash. Because . . . well, it’s a 40-day dash. It’s 6 weeks of focused effort to help you reach your attendance goals.
Why Does It All Happen in the Last 40 Days Now?
Simple: Covid.
Covid changed the rules about everything. And while we’ve returned to many of our pre-Covid behaviors, one that hasn’t come back is registering early.
In our post-Covid world, attendees are waiting longer than ever to register for events. Many people won’t commit until 40 days out or less. In a recent survey to our newsletter subscribers, 53% said most of their event registration is happening within 40 days of their event!
Hence, the 40-day dash.
What do you do in these last 40 days? You think like your prospects, meet them where they are—which means using a range of messages and platforms—and make direct asks.
This is how we are approaching marketing for our clients, and it’s working. We’re seeing the numbers peak in those last 40 days.
Here’s how to do it.
40-Day Dash Tip #1: Lean Heavily on Social Media
Instead of over-relying on email (something associations notoriously do), create a plan that leans heavily on organic and paid social media. Your organic posts can be about speakers and sessions, as well as testimonials from past attendees. Draft posts for your board members, executives, and speakers to post on their accounts.
You’ll need to do some paid campaigns as well. Where do your attendees spend their time? Invest in that platform. We’ve had great luck with paid LinkedIn campaigns, using custom targeting and demographic targeting.
40-Day Dash Tip #2: Retarget Likely Suspects
You have to stay in front of people! One post isn’t enough. Follow potential attendees around the web. Web retargeting is a great way to nudge people who have shown some interest in your event.
We will often do pixel retargeting, to re-engage people who went to the event website but didn’t register. We also use CRM targeting, which means uploading lists of past attendees, current members, resigned members, and prospective members for targeting.
40-Day Dash Tip #3: Cross-Market Across Your Organization
Take advantage of your existing communication channels and warm audiences to cross-promote your events. That can mean adding a few sentences about your event in the footer of other emails. Or you can include mentions of the event in blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and videos.
Remember, you’re trying to reach people everywhere they are!
40-Day Dash Tip #4: Send Thoughtful Emails
Yes, you are allowed to send emails. Some emails. We all get too many emails, and if people see emails from you over and over again, they’re more likely to ignore. But, if you’re strategic about it, you can still reach people with email.
Just don’t send more emails than necessary, and make sure each one answers your audience’s number one question: What’s in it for me?
One thing we often recommend: Schedule your last-chance reminder email for Sunday evening to boost engagement.
40-Day Dash Tip #5: Don’t Forget Direct Mail
Mail volume is down, so it’s a little easier to get attention these days with good old mail! Direct mail can yield excellent ROI for event marketing. People like something they can hold in their hands. Direct mail pieces can add a level of authenticity to your event, and executing them is quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive.
A great postcard with agenda highlights, an invitation to a special reception, or an infographic of your event “by the numbers” can play really well in those last 3 weeks. Always include an QR code!
So . . . what’s left? We do have one more tip for you as you navigate this 6-week sprint. Call in reinforcements!
When you absolutely must meet your attendance goals, enlist the help of experts who know how to navigate the 40-day dash.
This is the third of a four-part series about how to market your association’s events in 2024.
Human beings make most of our decisions from the emotional center of our brain. And then our pre-frontal cortex (the logic center of the brain) helps us reaffirm that our decision was the right one.
We know this because scientists put people in scanners and watch the different parts of their brain light up.
But what does brain science have to do with your association’s event? Everything.
In this series of posts, we’ve been working through the 3 phases of event marketing. Each phase highlights a key attribute your event marketing plan needs: Emotion, facts, and urgency.
So far, we’ve covered the first phase, Inspire People. That’s the phase that targets emotion.
Today, we’re going to talk about the second phase: Reassure the Intent.
This is the phase that targets facts. This is where you need to communicate to people: You know how you felt a spark when you connected with our message? Well, here are the goods!
What Does It Mean to Reassure the Intent?
Reassuring the intent simply means filling out the rest of the picture for potential attendees. You’re giving people what they need to confirm that registering for your event is something they must do.
This is the phase of marketing where you craft messages that answer questions like:
What will I learn?
Who will be there?
Who are the speakers?
What are the highlights?
What are the big reasons I don’t want to miss out?
We find that these are the questions associations usually want to start their marketing with. They want to lead with facts. Throw all the bullet points and all the checklists at people right away. It can be difficult, in Phase 1, to stay higher level, to find the deeper reason, the emotional hook.
But now, in Phase 2, you’re released! Let the facts shine! If you’ve done your job in the first phase and found the inspiration to hook attendees, this phase can feel a bit easier.
But don’t let that fool you.
Be Sure To Communicate the Value Proposition
We came across a study that another marketing agency did, that found that only 13% of associations surveyed said they had a compelling value proposition.
13%!
Coming up with a sterling value proposition and knowing how to communicate it has always been a challenge for associations. It’s like answering an existential question: It’s hard to do and you’re so close to it that you often can’t see if you’ve truly answered it.
Reassuring the intent is an uphill climb if you don’t know the value proposition for your event. So before you start listing bullet points, do some work around crafting it. (If you’re struggling, we can help.)
Case Study: How We’re Doing It
We helped a long-time client market their annual event, Staffing World.
In our last post, we talked about how we found the inspirational thread by analyzing the audience and focusing on “people people.”
For phase 2, it’s time to focus on the facts.
Reassuring the intent is about hitting people in the logic center of their brain. It’s when concepts like “reputation” and “expertise” matter. That’s why we created messaging around the fact that this event is the biggest gathering of its kind in the industry. It’s THE place to be for staffing professionals who want to connect, learn, and grow.
We designed various print and digital pieces to highlight specific educational sessions, formal and informal networking events, and the best-in-class expo hall. We also talked in-depth about the high-caliber individuals who would attend, creating a sense of FOMO so that potential attendees could see themselves among this crowd.
Remember, people read 30% or less on the web, and slightly more in print. Design and messaging matter just as much now as they did in the inspiration phase.
Your marketing can’t become a Wikipedia page, dry and factual. You’re still jockeying for people’s time, and you have to give them a reason to listen to you
Reach out if you’d like to talk about how your association can best reassure the intent. Or if you’re still chewing on how to find the inspiration, we’re happy to talk you through as well.
Each phase highlights a key attribute your event marketing plan needs: Emotion, facts, and urgency.
Today, we’re going to talk about the first phase, Inspire People. This is the phase that targets emotion.
What Does it Mean to Inspire People?
When you connect with something you really want, such as a career or personal goal, you’re connecting with it for emotional reasons. You want the thing because you want to feel a certain way—like delighted, proud, or contented.
The thing matters. But it’s the feeling that truly drives it.
Inspiring people means understanding how they want to feel, and connecting with them at that level. In other words, you need to understand what moves your members and what feelings they are chasing.
Associations often make the mistake of leading with the facts. Facts are very important, and we’ll talk about their role in phase 2. But if you skip the inspiration phase, you miss your chance to reach people at the gut level.
And that matters, because so many of our decisions are actually made from the gut. We think logic is driving our choices. But logic merely confirms what we already feel.
How To Find the Inspiration That Will Drive Energy Around Your Event
Finding the inspiration is a process of discovery. It means looking closely at who your audience is. Not necessarily their demographics. But rather, what motivates them.
Are they type A go-getters who always need a challenge? Are they career veterans who are thinking about legacy? Your people are likely motivated by more than one thing. But you need to dig until you find the central idea that will move them, the central spark of inspiration.
Once you find that, you need to turn it into remarkable pieces of content that hit your audience in their feeling center.
We’ll get to the tactics of how many emails, when to send direct mail, and which social media platforms to use. But first, you must know what feeling you’re trying to create, and what big idea you’re channeling. This will help you develop actionable messages, and to choose the style of design that is most likely to grab your target audience.
Case Study: How We Did It
We were tasked with helping a longtime client, the American Staffing Association, market their annual Staffing World conference. While ASA has been hosting this event for more than 50 years, today’s uncertainty was causing a drop in registrations. Six weeks before Staffing World, they still hadn’t hit their numbers.
ASA’s target audience are “people people.” They are staffing, recruiting, and workforce solutions professionals who put individuals to work in meaningful roles. As a result, they improve lives, businesses, and the U.S. economy. But they also deal with some pretty tough challenges, ranging from economic uncertainty to budget cuts and layoffs.
We combined this audience analysis with industry trends and proven formats to craft emotionally charged messaging and creative. The goal was to inspire people to come together for the good and the ugly. To seize opportunities and collaborate on challenges.
From there, we engaged the audience with targeted social media campaigns complemented by brief, thoughtful emails with easy calls to action.
Six weeks later, Staffing World had more attendees than ever in ASA history.
It’s well worth the investment to spend time digging into what will inspire people to come to your event.
Even more helpful is to get an outside perspective. Someone who can look at your event and your attendees with fresh eyes. Reach out if you’d like to chat about how to find the inspiration for your event!
How are you going to get people to your association’s event this year? If you’re not asking yourself this question right now, you should be.
Why? Because just about everyone is having trouble marketing events right now. The fear of recession, combined with the reality of inflation, means companies are searching for areas to cut.
Inevitably, they see education and travel, i.e., your event, as the low-hanging fruit.
In fact, a Forrester report from late 2023 predicted that companies would be rethinking investments in “employee experience” for 2024. Top on the list? You guessed it: Meetings and events related to personal development, education, and training.
According to our own data, we’re predicting that in 2024, event attendance will be down 12 – 15% and accruals will be down 18 – 25%. The percentage of members renewing will stay roughly the same. But because so many of your member companies now have decreased revenues, they’ll renew at a lower fee.
You need a plan to cleverly circumnavigate these brutal realities. To get your event off the chopping block and into the pipeline of possibility.
The reality is that attendees behave differently today than they did even just two years ago. This means you’ve got to take a fresh look at the year and the way you’re going about things. You’ve got to be willing to think differently, and to go back to the drawing board on some key elements of your strategy.
We’ll explain what we mean in this series of blog posts. But for now, we’ve got 3 words for you: Think in phases.
With uncertainty always swirling around and the world moving faster than ever, you’ve got to take a phased approach to marketing your event. Each phase is as important as the next, but you also can’t get ahead of yourself.
In this series of posts, we’ll talk about what each phase looks like, and offer some real-life examples from association clients.
We can’t wait to share all the details. But here’s the TL;DR:
For years, we’ve been championing the idea that for your event to stay relevant, you must inspire the base. What we’ve learned in working with more than 100 different associations is that inspiration is part-science, part-art.
Finding what will inspire people to commit to your event is a process of discovery. Once you understand what moves your people, you must create actionable messages around it. Then you have to know when and how to deploy them, to wrest people’s attention away—even momentarily—from every other distraction competing for their time.
Inspiration fosters unity, aligning elements through a dynamic force in our collective pursuits.
The second phase of marketing is all about curating the facts, to paint a vivid picture of your event. This is when FOMO is your friend. You’ve got a millimeter of people’s attention. What will you do with it?
It’s not that the inspiration phase is over. Rather, you’re pulling the inspiration through into more concrete details, talking about who will be there, what attendees will learn, and what benefits await them.
In our contemporary landscape, attendees are waiting longer than ever to register for events. Many people won’t commit until 40 days out or less. We call this the 40-day dash.
We created an entire marketing program around the 40-day dash, with specific tactics to help you reach your audience goals in those last 6 weeks. We’ll show you how to target and re-target, how to get others to spread the word for you, and how to make email work for you (versus getting ignored).
We’re going to face challenges in 2024, there’s no doubt about it. But when you take the right steps, and invest in the right phases of marketing, you can have a successful, inspiring, well-attended event.
The good news is this: When you take the right steps, and invest in the right phases of marketing, you can have a successful, inspiring, well-attended event.
Events are alive and well, says a new survey of event producers, convention center executives, and attendees—though you can expect some changes and challenges ahead. The survey reveals key insights that can help you leverage opportunities and minimize difficulties as your prepare for your association’s next in-person event.
Overall Outlook
The big picture looks good. Overall, the event industry rebound has been better than expected, with 83% of convention center executives saying the pace of recovery has exceeded their expectations. Remarkably, 0% of execs surveyed said recovery has been worse than anticipated. On another positive note, more than 40% of event producers surveyed plan to launch completely new in-person events in the next two years.
Attendance is Up
Event attendance has been rebounding over the last few years. For example, attendance in Q2 of 2023 was 85% of 2019 numbers, and attendance in 2024 is expected to reach “full recovery.” If your event date is fast approaching, you could still see a late surge in registrations. Nearly 75% of event producers surveyed say attendees are registering closer to event dates.
Costs Are Also Up
Expect to pay more. A whopping 70% of convention center executives say they increased pricing for venue services, and nearly half hiked rates for exhibit halls and major event spaces. As consolation, you can expect improvements in venues’ safety and security, technology, signage, and services.
Hotel Woes
Be aware of hotel issues that could affect your members’ event experience. These include high room rates, staffing issues, lack of quality, and overcrowding. Coincidentally, the number of attendees who book short-term rentals and AirBnBs is on the rise.
Hybrid Work
Teleworking doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of interest in in-person gatherings. Some data suggests companies could use your event to bring dispersed teams together. Additionally, nearly half of convention attendees say they are more likely to travel with a friend or family member. Half are also likely to extend time in the host city for vacation.
Cautious Optimism
While the overall event outlook is positive, keep in mind that every event, sector, and organization is different. Expect to struggle with issues like inflation, sustainability, political and social activism, the labor shortage, technology, and more. But forge ahead knowing your event is still a powerful place for connection, collaboration, and learning that can make a difference for your members and their constituents.
Ask any one of your members or customers how they’re doing, and there’s a good chance they’ll say, “Busy,” as part of their answer.
Busy professionals are busy working hard, accomplishing goals, and advancing their companies. They’re also busy making phone calls, answering texts and emails, and sitting in meetings. Busy parents are extra busy taking their kids to things like piano lessons and soccer practice. Many people are also busy scrolling endlessly through social media and binge watching their favorite shows.
The Dark Side of Busy
The trouble is that a lot of this busyness is a distraction. It’s activity, not productivity. Just think about how many meetings could have been an email, how many emails could have been a quick phone call, or how many of those emails and phone calls weren’t really necessary at all. Consider how many hours you have lost to social media scrolling or streaming television this week alone.
The Things That Matter Most
Of course, some of this busyness is truly worth your time and attention—like work and family milestones. People will always make time for the things that matter most. As an organization, this is the sweet spot you are looking for. First, you need to cut through all the busy noise that steals your audience’s attention. Then, you need to be one of those things that matters most so they carve out time for you in their busy, busy lives.
Your Biggest Competition
Busyness might just be your biggest competition right now. But there are ways to overcome it. Here are two strategies to get you started:
1. Adapt to New Technologies
First, do your part to fight busyness by reducing the number of emails you send. Next, fish where the fish are. Package your messaging in formats that your audience can digest in places they’re already spending time. Try short videos, subscription-based TV ads, social media ads, and web retargeting. These formats can be targeted to your current email list so you reach the same audience but with better results.
2. Speak Like a Human Being
Corporate speak just doesn’t cut it anymore. Your messaging needs personality. Your tone should be caring and empathetic to pain points. You need people to trust you as a human being, not an impersonal entity. Prove you’re worth their precious time and attention by speaking like a human being who understands their challenges and is here to help.
Adapt to the new Busy Normal
It’s time to adapt to the new busy normal because busyness isn’t going away. Even if you’re getting okay numbers with your emails right now, it’s only a matter of time before people will be too busy to read them. Besides, you’ll have to do better than just “okay” if you want your organization to grow and thrive.
You send out an email to members and prospects in the morning, and then check your open rate and click-through numbers in the afternoon. As usual, your numbers are stellar!
You’ve got an open rate of 70% and a click-through rate of 60%. You notice that your numbers seem to keep getting better and better.
If you haven’t realized it by now, your numbers aren’t accurate. Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly common for security bots to be responsible for the great majority of B2B email engagement—as much as 80% by some estimates.
These bots don’t mean to screw up your marketing plans. In fact, they’re in place to scan for links to malware and phishing attempts.
They derive from security software associated with various B2B email programs. Their job is to scan the email intended for your recipient. And in fact, if they just scanned it, it would be no problem. But the bots also open the email and click the links to check the redirects and make sure they aren’t malware.
The problem is, bot engagement gets recorded just like actual engagement. According to HubSpot, these security filters are more common in certain industries, like finance or healthcare. Ultimately, you don’t really know if your emails are getting opened or not.
And while some marketing automation programs have tried to create fixes, it’s a cat-and-mouse game. Every time the bad actors increase their phishing efforts, security must get more sophisticated, too.
The bottom line is: The bots are going to win.
But that doesn’t mean you need to lose.
Let’s Stop Talking About Your Emails
During our regular client meetings, one topic consistently dominates the conversation: emails. The focus revolves around the emails we sent last week and planning the next set for the upcoming week.
We get it. We monitor our own email performance, hoping for high open rates and click-throughs. We recognize the value of email as a form of communication.
However, we also know that email shouldn’t be the sole communication platform. Relying excessively on it carries the risk of failing to reach the intended audience.
Therefore, our primary message to you is this: It’s crucial to significantly reduce the number of emails you send.
It’s scary to think about slashing the number of emails in the queue. But it’s even scarier to rely on a false narrative of engagement, created by security bots.
Instead of your entire marketing strategy being tied to sending email after email, you need to create a more holistic strategy. There are lots of names for this. Integrated. Omni-channel. Multi-channel. Cross-channel. Unified.
We’re agnostic as to the terminology, but for our purposes in working with associations, the key idea is Not just email.
Not just email can look like utilizing the social media platforms where your members and prospects hang out. It can look like texting, calling, and messaging. And it can look like thoughtful content strategy that hasn’t just been rinsed and repeated from the previous year.
We know it’s uncomfortable to let go of the main tactic you’ve always cleaved to. To untether from what seems like a sure thing. And it’s overwhelming to think about learning platforms you’re not yet familiar with or perhaps haven’t even been invented yet.
Marketers in industries across the spectrum are feeling the pain, but we know the particular stress that membership- and subscription-based organizations are feeling. We also know that it will only get worse—and not “worse before it gets better,” but “worse before it gets even worse.”
Trust is the foundation of just about any relationship. This is true in life and business. It’s true for your association, too.
We know that you think people trust you. You think that, by virtue of existing for the good of your industry, trust is a given.
But we’ve seen the numbers and interviewed enough people from enough associations in enough industries that we’ve been able to form a pretty good working hypothesis.
And here it is: The reason prospects, non-members, and less engaged members don’t come to your event is that they don’t, in fact, trust you. Specifically, they don’t trust you with their time and their money.
Therefore, if you want these people to come to your event, you must build their trust.
Here’s how to start doing that.
Trust Building Step No. 1: Question Your Assumptions
When you’ve been putting on an event for a while, with the same kinds of meetings, sessions, networking groups, celebrations, awards ceremonies, etc., it’s easy to get tunnel vision about what the bulk of people in your industry want.
In working with associations, we see this all the time.
It looks like this: Your association has always done things a certain way, and because a small group of passionate members have given you good feedback, you assume that experience generalizes to everyone. The events team gets it in their head that this is what people want.
So you invest in certain types of programming and spend your marketing budget on what you believe are the sure things and the big draws. Then you push the messaging out to prospects and non-members. But they either don’t show up, or they show up once, and don’t show up again. They’re lost, and you’re left wondering why.
We can tell you why: Because you made an assumption. You created something you believed people wanted, and relied on confirmation bias to keep sticking with it.
But assumptions do not breed trust. In fact, they erode it.
Try this: List out your biggest marketing initiatives around your events. Beside each initiative, note the underlying assumption behind it. Then ask yourself: What if your assumptions are wrong?
To find out, you’ll need to do Step 2.
Trust Building Step No. 2: Start Listening Better
Most of the associations we encounter pride themselves on listening to their members. But when we help them pull back the curtain, we discover that they are mostly listening to engaged members.
In other words, they are overservicing the engaged, at the cost of missing out on what is driving (or not driving) the unengaged.
Think of it this way: Your association represents an industry. Your members likely only account for a small slice of that total industry. And your engaged members? They are a tiny slice of a tiny slice. It’s easier and more convenient to connect with that tiny slice, but it’s woefully incomplete.
You must talk to everyone. But here’s the caveat: You can’t talk to prospects or non-members as if they already trust you. To build trust among people who don’t know you very well, you must first listen to them. This is how you can discern what excites them, motivates them, frustrates them, and scares them.
You can use surveys as one of the ways you listen, but remember that surveys tend to be completed by people who are already engaged. You need to get beyond the usual ways of asking for feedback.
For example, you might segment interested prospects into strategic customer focus groups and try out different offers. Does pushing a gala get a good response? Do they click through when you talk about networking dinners? Certifications? Use data to listen.
Trust Building Step No. 3: Open the Gates
More than anything, to grow and stay relevant, you want to appeal to non-members. But when you lock up everything on your website and gate it for members-only, you’re signaling to those non-members you so desperately want that they’re not part of it.
We know the argument that associations make. That gating resources creates value for members. That access should be a member benefit, given only to those who pay dues.
But . . . why? After all, isn’t your purpose to serve the industry?
We need only to look back a few years, to the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when you ungated your best stuff and shared freely. Do you remember what happened? We do. Engagement was through the roof. Webinar attendance was setting records.
You doubled-down on your mission and threw open your arms for the good of people and the good of the industry. Why is that different now that people aren’t locked in their homes? Why are we back to gates and walls?
What would happen if you threw it open again? Would you lose members because they suddenly thought the value of membership had diminished? Or would you gain the trust of a whole slice of people who suddenly feel invited? Conventional wisdom says that trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. But if your association gets out of its own way, you can at least get started on the right path.
Recession coming? No, the labor market is strong! We’re about to have a soft landing. Although . . . inflation! It’s a long way from under control, so maybe we are headed straight for a recession.
We are on the brink of recession. We aren’t on the brink of recession. The true answer (which even the data heads don’t know) matters far less than people’s perception of whether we are.
Because what always goes with a maybe-recession is a certain-scaling back. Once the speculation starts, where do companies look to cut costs? Business travel. Training. Expenses where they can’t immediately trace the ROI.
And that’s bad news for your events this summer.
Or maybe it’s exactly the news you need to make some changes.
Here are 3 best practices we’re doing with our association clients to help them reach their numbers amid the recession chatter.
#1
Offer, Segment, Adapt
Recently, we promoted a special offer for a client who has an event in June. We sent emails and ran a social media campaign that advertised an early bird deal: Sign up by X date and you get X amount of dollars off your registration.
The offer wasn’t necessarily about getting people to sign up—it was still early, after all. The offer was mostly a strategy to see who would click. Tracking who clicked told us who was interested in the event. With this particular campaign, we had 1,600 people click.
Now, we had a large segment of very warm prospects. You can talk to people who’ve shown interest in a slightly different way than people who still aren’t sure who you even are.
Pulling out this segment of interested prospects helps us create a customized engagement strategy. With each piece of content we send to them, we could learn more about what gets them excited, and adapt accordingly.
The best part: If we just convert 30% of this one segment, we’ve helped our client nearly reach their attendance goal.
#2
Enlist the Early Adopters
The early bird bait may be all about uncovering a segment to market to, but some people will take you up on your offer. These are the early adopters. Maybe they are loyal members. Maybe they are willing to take a chance on you. Either way, they are a fantastic asset.
In thinking about them, remember one word: EARLY.
It stands for Early Adopters Really Love You.
Why do they love you? That’s for you to find out—by asking them. And specifically, asking them to share their story.
We heard from a vendor who mentioned they had just signed up to attend an industry association event. It wasn’t even on their radar, they said. But a colleague posted on social media that they had just signed up and couldn’t wait to see everyone. That one message not only inspired our vendor to sign up, but inspired at least 5 others, who posted in the comments—all within an hour—that they had just registered.
Both the early adopters and the early majority (a larger segment) can help you in this project. But you need to make it easy for them by making a specific ask, such as: Can you post one sentence on your preferred social network about why you are attending?
#3
Create a Landing Page That Cuts Through the Noise, Especially for Non-Members
Time and time again, we see associations that invest heavily in building great websites for their members. But so often, when non-members go to their site, they aren’t even clear if the event is open to them.
Non-members already have a hurdle to overcome (usually one involving cost). Don’t throw more hurdles at them!
It’s why you need to build out a simple “demo-style” landing page for your event. It should be a page that’s accessible for all, but optimized for non-members.
Think about when you are researching software. Are you ready to buy it the second you land on the page? No, you want a demo. You want to understand what you’re getting, in the simplest terms possible.
At Rottman Creative, we’ve taken this “demo” concept and reimagined event landing pages for several of our clients. After refining and tweaking, and we have a formula that works.
If you’re curious to learn more about landing pages or any of these strategies for changing the conversation from “Will there be a recession?” to “I’ll be there! Who’s with me?” . . . just drop us a line at: gary@rottmancreative.com or let’s talk!
We’ve debated, gone all-in on one and then the other, and here we are again. In this particular moment in time, data on one side, stories on the other, seemingly a chasm between them.
It’s time to close the chasm. To blend the science of conversion with the art of storytelling.
But how did the divide between narrative and numbers come to be? Where did we get the false assertion that we needed to cleave to one or the other?
In addition to being an agency committed to using a data-driven process for our clients, we’re also in the business of storytelling. That’s why we’ve thought a lot about the danger of de-prioritizing one for the other.
There’s been an evolution of how associations use stories and data in their go-to-market strategies. It’s never been more important to understand how to blend them. But to fully grasp the potential of this moment, we need to trace where we’ve been.
When Storytelling Saved the Day
With the Global Financial Crisis that swept across multiple industries in 2008, marketers saw the writing on the wall. Non-essential things were getting cut. Belts were tightening.
To release the purse strings, to move out of a mindset of scarcity, people needed something more. They needed to be inspired.
Having released the first iPhone the year before, that’s exactly what Apple was doing. They were spinning a story about a product that nobody had any idea they needed, even as the economy all around was teetering.
A few years later, marketing guru Simon Sinek wrote a book called Start With Why, based, in large part, on noticing the way Apple was able to captivate and reinvent itself through the decades. People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, he wrote.
This wasn’t a new idea, but it was the right idea at the right time, and it re-ignited the power of brand storytelling. Just about every marketing firm jumped on the story bandwagon. Inspiration was the name of the game.
We lived it, too, and we helped our clients create campaigns meant to inspire. As Millennials began to come of age, with their focus on mission-driven organizations, the storytelling frenzy only grew stronger. It was about authenticity and creating deep connection.
And Then the World Started to Shift
As social media increasingly muddied the waters of authenticity, storytelling started to feel too fanciful for a world grappling with what was true and what was fake. There was a pandemic and another economic crisis, but this time, it was data that seemed to be the savior.
What can you measure? What can you track? What can you see? It was the metrics that mattered, that would cut through the white noise and distraction.
Now, we’re slowly emerging from that epicenter of fear, but the landscape is different again. We’re forced to be constantly connected—and yet, we’re wholly disconnected from each other. We’re also distrustful.
Do we need stories? Do we need data?
Yes and yes.
But what we really need is discernment about how the two are connected.
The New, Data-Driven Storytelling
What we know now about storytelling is that it’s more trial and error than it is magic. Simon Sinek wasn’t wrong when he said that people connect with WHY an organization exists, more than the particulars of WHAT they do.
But it takes a lot of work to know what stories to tell around that WHY. It takes careful measurement to know which stories, told which ways, will convert people. And more than anything, in today’s environment, it takes building trust.
Finding the right story to tell can build that trust and inspire members and prospects to take action. But you can only find it if you know how to measure and track.
When we talk about brand storytelling now, what we’re really talking about is conversion.
We’d love to hear how you’ve used storytelling in the past, and how you plan to use it going forward.
More people quit their jobs in 2021 than in any year since 2001. While it leveled off a bit in 2022, the trend isn’t over. Some call it The Great Resignation. Others prefer The Great Reshuffle.
You can call it whatever you want. But one thing is clear: It’s likely degraded the quality of your database.
Those emails your association is sending? A huge percentage are going into a void, because so many of your brightest prospects have simply moved on. Prospect lists that may have been in peak condition in early 2020 are now antiquated, an artifact of data decay.
Oh, you say, but email forwards! Sure, emails get forwarded. Sometimes. Do you want to hinge your event on it?
How Bad is the Database Decay Problem for Associations?
Prospect databases naturally decay each year from your run-of-the-mill turnover. But the past three years have been anything but run-of-the-mill. We’ve seen estimates as high as 70% for B2B database decay rates.
Meeting planners know it’s happening. But associations? Too many haven’t opened their eyes. You know that you’re not getting the response rate you want, but you’ve chalked it up to Covid-19. And it IS related to that. But it’s related to a facet that we’re only now beginning to understand.
Some telltale signs that you have a prospect database problem:
You’re not getting the response you used to for offerings like webinars.
Your open rate has plummeted.
The only real engagement you’re getting is from members.
How to Stop Emailing Fake People and Reach New Prospects
First, you have to clean your data. Your software can help you do this.
That’s actually the easy part.
The harder part is figuring out how to engage a fresh crop of prospects. It can feel like starting over. And while that sounds daunting, it’s an opportunity.
Taking a fresh approach is how we helped a large global legal association increase their prospects by 56% between 2021 and 2022—while cutting the cost-per-prospect by nearly a third.
It’s also how we helped a large staffing association get their most conference attendees ever in 2022.
As you build your new database, we have a few tips for reaching and converting these new prospects.
Switch from content marketing to people marketing: If traditional content marketing is about volume, people marketing is about thinking like a prospect. You market to others how you want to be marketed to, and you avoid the things that annoy people. (Learn more about what it means to switch to people marketing.)
Do a content audit: With your people marketing frame of mind, look at the content you currently have, and ask yourself if it’s any good. By good, we mean does it tell a story? Does it inspire trust? Does it identify your value prospect at a glance? Ask yourself if the piece of content would be worth your time, and if not, toss it from the lead gen pile. (Learn more about the danger of wasting your prospect’s time.)
Refresh and repackage the content worth keeping: Can you create a webinar from an article that performed well on social? Build a resiliency toolkit from a series of blog posts? Develop a series of success stories from testimonials? Put together a preview of your event so that prospects understand what it’s like to actually be there?
Don’t Use That Outdated Campaign Strategy on Your New Database
There’s an old saying among gardeners: Don’t dig a fifty-cent hole for a $5 plant. In other words, don’t bother putting your expensive plant in cheap, nutrient-lacking soil.
Likewise, a fresh, clean database won’t do you any good if you put it in poor soil. It’s worth investing to make sure you are getting the most from that prospect list.
You need a branded, fully-automated, data-driven campaign. We’re talking about an intelligent, go-to-market plan that’s integrated across all touchpoints. In other words, a campaign that meets your prospects where they are, and responds to what they do.
Not sure what one of these plans looks like? Contact us and we’d be happy to show you.
If you’re like most associations, your member recruitment strategy probably goes something like this:
Work very hard to get the largest companies in your industry to join, because their dues are the highest.
Work even harder to get the medium-sized companies in your industry to join, because they are your reliable base.
Let the small companies just find you, because the combination of lesser dues + resources needed to serve them doesn’t always feel worth it.
We understand this approach. We also know that associations must do a delicate juggling act. You need to make your payroll to stay viable, but you’re also nonprofit, charged with representing the industry.
In other words, you’re supposed to be doing it all, but your staff lacks the time and resources. So, you adopt a triage mentality, and focus your efforts on what seems like it will produce the greatest rewards.
But what if we told you there was an easily available opportunity that didn’t make your life harder and wouldn’t add more work? One that would allow you to better represent your industry AND grab a boatload of dues-paying members?
The answer is behind door number three, where the small companies are hanging out.
We’re going to show you exactly WHY you should grab them and HOW to make it worth your while.
Why Your Association Should Actively Recruit Smalls
One of our clients is a large association in the human resources industry, with about 36,000 members, and an 88% retention rate. After some discussions about their membership goals, we helped them create a campaign that would specifically target smaller businesses in the industry.
They got more than 50 new members in a matter of two months.
Here’s what the Senior Vice President and Chief Membership Officer of the association told us the other day during our weekly check-in.
“Right now, we have so many applications coming in from new members that we can’t even process them all. And we are on course to set an all-time revenue high.”
There are so many things that are great about this. First, they have an influx of new people. New people bring new blood and new opportunities. Because the CEO of that $4 million company you just recruited might be the decision maker at a $25 million company in a few years.
You never know the energy and possibility that can come with ANY new member—and that includes one that is 10 times smaller than the largest organization on your roster.
Plus, when you have a rich blend of large, medium, AND small organizations in the mix, you’re much better able to uphold your mission of representing ALL voices in the industry.
And then there’s the most obvious thing: Smaller organizations are low-hanging fruit. No-brainer revenue. The benefits of belonging to your association far outweigh the dues for most of these smalls. You just need to take the time to articulate the right message to them.
How to Handle Smalls? Automate!
We know what you’re thinking: This all sounds good, but it takes effort to recruit smalls. And if we don’t put in the effort to retain them, they’ll leave after the first year and blow our retention rate.
We hear you, and you’re right. That is a challenge. Fortunately, there’s a great answer: Automation!
You know how we helped our HR industry association client get those 50 new members? We ran multiple digital campaigns for them throughout the year. That’s it. No heavy lifting required.
We helped them craft a targeted message. It required a modest initial investment, and then it ran itself—and it continues to run itself.
That same automation can work for onboarding and retention workflow. You probably can’t afford to hire a member representative who is solely dedicated to the smalls. But you can use modern technology to streamline the process.
Targeting small organizations allows you to grow your association, thoroughly represent the industry, and plant seeds for future growth.
We understand the challenges. But we truly believe this is one of the least-accessed, BEST opportunities right now for associations.
We’d be happy to bounce ideas around with you, and help you envision what a targeted campaign to the smalls would look like.
Recession is an economic concept, but it’s so much a part of the popular imagination that it’s also become a behavioral one. Even the word “recession” gives people a fright.
The experts may be debating whether we are officially in a recession, but people are already thinking differently about their money and how to spend it.
This applies to associations as much as it applies to consumer spending. Because the same people who buy consumer goods also make decisions about whether to renew their company’s membership, send employees to events, and invest in training or other professional development tools.
Whether your answer to the recession question is yes, no, or maybe so doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that your association is ready to respond to people’s behavior over the coming year.
We have 7 ideas for how you can adjust and prepare for another tumultuous season.
1. Find your sense of urgency.
Many associations don’t spend time thinking seriously about the fall . . . until the fall. Yes, summer is busy, and kids are most likely not even back to school yet. We know August can be a hot and lazy month. But what if you DID start now, instead of waiting until the fall? Get out ahead of a potential economic downturn by planning your entire marketing strategy around it, instead of waiting to see what happens.
2. Use data to flag your risks.
What story is your data telling you? Are you letting it guide your efforts? For example, people often sign up for membership just to get a discount for the annual conference. But then they don’t use any of the other membership benefits. So when the budget tightens, whether because of a real or perceived economic decline, what do you think is the first to go? That membership they barely used. Identify these members at risk of dropping off, flag them in your list, and market to them specifically.
3. Prepare to compete with an election for attention.
Between now and November 8, people will be inundated with nonstop messages from political campaigns. Emails, social media posts, videos, ads, texts, phone calls: Every channel will be jammed with political messaging. How will your messages stand out? You’ll never beat politics when it comes to sheer number of communications. How will you reach prospects and members in a meaningful way?
4. Think like a prospect.
We preach this in just about every newsletter. You need to think like a prospect. The marketing techniques that drive you crazy as a consumer? Don’t do those things in your own marketing! The endless email drip campaigns. The hard sell. The blanket messages that aren’t targeted to your behavior. You can’t stand these things, and neither can prospects!
5. Figure out how to offer a “sample” of your event.
We’ve been trained by retail and entertainment giants that anything worth our time comes with a preview, whether it’s a movie trailer, book or music sample, or list of reviews. Everything worth something now offers a meaningful window into the experience or a way to test before buying. Associations must begin offering the equivalent of the movie trailer. Otherwise, prospects fear you are wasting their time.
6. Keep communication jargon-free.
Lofty language that uses a lot of words winds up saying very little. Too many associations forego clarity in their quest to sound credible and worthy. But all those staid, insider phrases just come off like clutter. Instead, write like a human, talking to humans. Use clear, short, actionable sentences. Always check your reading level, and aim for no higher than Grade 8 (Flesch-Kincaid rates this newsletter as Grade 7, in case you’re wondering).
7. Train your resilience.
Resiliency is an interesting thing. It’s a mighty force that carries people and organizations through the ups and downs. But it’s not a given. You must cultivate it. What are you building right now that will last? What are you doing right now that will enable you to bounce back when the rebound happens? If someone asked you what makes your association resilient, would you be able to answer?
There’s a new fear in town. To be clear, our lives are already full of fear, thanks to two tumultuous years and a lingering feeling that the shoe is about to drop. But the generalized fear that comes with being a person these days isn’t actually what we’re talking about.
We’re talking about what your members and prospects are truly scared of when they see your marketing email, early bird offer, or social media post.
They’re afraid that you’re wasting their time. Squandering their attention. Making promises you can’t keep.
If we’ve learned anything the past few years, it’s that we don’t have to allow people trifling with our time. Plundering our calendars. Taking our attention for granted. We don’t have to put up with awkward social interactions or obligatory events. We barely even have to leave our homes and offices.
All we have to do is sit, click, and Zoom. And even then, we can probably multi-task and knock something else off our to-do list.
How Did Time Get to Be Like This?
Think about it: Do you even answer phone calls from numbers or names you don’t recognize? Our outlook has become, “If I don’t know you or have a reason to trust you, I assume you are wasting my time.”
What has happened to cause the erosion of trust, and the fear that others are wasting our time?
The simple answer is that we’re now conditioned to regard business-related events that require real-life interaction with suspicion. Or if not suspicion, second-guessing.
This is because we have learned to accomplish so many tasks virtually. Plus, we’re busy. There’s normal busy, and then there’s, “You need to do the job of three people” busy. Many people are stuck in the latter. Time away from the office is a luxury they can’t afford.
There is a more complex answer, too. And it’s that technology, media, and retail have trained us that anything worth our time (or money) comes with a preview, a list of reviews, or a “cancel at any time” option.
Want to start watching a new series on Netflix or Hulu? Watch a preview before you commit to even 30 minutes! Want to listen to an audiobook? Listen to a 4-minute sample first, to make sure the narrator’s voice doesn’t annoy you! Want to order a new air fryer, pair of pajamas, or phone case? Read reviews so you don’t set yourself up for disappointment!
Everything worth something now offers a meaningful window into the experience or a way to test it out.Everything, that is, except the products that most associations market.
How to Combat the Fear of Wasted Time
A decade ago, or perhaps even a few years ago, your organization could count on the benefit of the doubt.
Now you have to hustle in the marketplace, competing with, well . . . just about everyone and everything.
That means you’ve got to figure out how to tell the story of your event in a way that allows prospects to get a meaningful glimpse. In other words, you need to think about how to offer the equivalent of reading the book sample or watching the movie trailer.
Posting an agenda online doesn’t count. A couple of testimonials won’t cut it either. The same-old highlights reel isn’t enough.
How will you reach a jaded, exhausted, and skeptical population? How will you connect? How will you build trust, so that prospects know you value their time enough to offer them the same kind of ability to sample the experience?
We’ve seen the marketing that most associations are currently putting into the world, and we can tell you: 99% of it is missing this element.
How will you be different? How will you provide that missing piece?
Rottman Creative can help with your marketing. You just have to trust us.
We get stellar results for associations who are willing to think and behave differently. Give us a call and let’s start a project together now!
We’re starting to think that “content marketing” is dead. Or rather, it needs to die.
Why? Because too many associations have the wrong idea about how to use content to connect with new prospects. It occurs to us that the term itself might be the problem.
To be clear, content marketing is about creating and sharing pieces of compelling content that help establish your brand as helpful. This piece you’re reading is content marketing. So we’re clearly on board with the idea.
The problem is that, for many associations who do content marketing, the emphasis is usually on the content itself, not the person on the receiving end.
Content Overload is Not a Relationship-Building Strategy
How do we know associations are emphasizing content over people? Because when we dig into the practices and journey maps our clients create, we see very little attention paid to the fact that most people don’t want to be overwhelmed with content in their email inbox.
It’s all, Look at our content! Give us your email and we will send you so much content! Then we’ll ask what you think about our content! Then we’ll slice and dice and show you the same piece of content 7 different ways!
When it really should be, Hey, nice to meet you. You probably don’t want all this junk in your inbox, because you’re a person, not a robot. Let’s start a conversation that respects your time.
Consider how many people open their email each day, use the “shift” key to highlight a pack of emails, and delete them wholesale.
It’s what we do. So does your boss, your best friend from college, and the guy who sold you your mattress.
And you know who else does? All those prospects you forgot were people, who get irritated at the very same things you get irritated at.
Your content marketing is overloading people, instead of learning about them and meeting them on their terms.
What you need instead is people marketing.
Two Principals for People Marketing
People marketing is about making information more accessible and reducing the level of annoyance prospects feel. It offers content without overwhelm. It asks: What irritates you? And then it avoids that.
We’ve got two principals to help you understand people marketing. The first one is an old-school, universal truth and the second is based in behavioral science.
#1 Market to others how you want to be marketed to.
We all know the golden rule of treating others how you want to be treated. It’s elegant and beautifully simple. But when it comes to marketing, hardly anyone does it.
Ask yourself, what builds trust for you? What makes you engage instead of deleting, lean in instead of running away? Sure, some of it is topic related (people who are interested in sports read sports content, etc.). But much of it is behavior related. If people feel like you are inundating them and wasting their time, you’re gone from their inbox.
#2 Think differently about outcomes (and happiness).
Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling Upon Happiness, has written extensively about how bad human beings are at predicting what will make us happy and how long our happiness will last.
For example, positive events, like promotions or a new house, do add to our happiness, he says. But not as much as we think, and not for very long. What makes us most genuinely happy, and happy for the long haul, are social connections with others.
His work deals with individuals, but we think the findings generalize to organizations—since organizations are run by individuals. Especially the idea that when you focus so much on desired outcomes (because you’re certain they are the key to happiness), there’s a lot you might miss.
Associations can become so preoccupied with reaching short-terms goals that they compromise the very relationships they are trying to build. They think more content and more emails will create outcomes that bring happiness for everyone. But they miss what people want: connections.
In other words, beware of trading short-view actions for long-term strategy.
What Will Your People Marketing Look Like?
This is the question your association should be asking itself. Inside of it are the questions: How can you think more like a prospect? How can you create trust among people who don’t know you? How can you focus on people more than outcomes?
Rottman Creative helps associations like yours find answers to these questions.
So your in-person event is back on. Great! Now you need attendees. Here’s a list of proven failures that will most definitely NOT attract prospects. Take these tactics off your to-do list. Then implement a few of the surefire strategies listed below to build a high-quality prospect pool and get more people in the door.
FAILURE #1
Have no value proposition or differentiator
If you’re looking to deter prospects or get ignored altogether, having no value proposition is a great start. Afterall, professionals in your space have lots of events to choose from, so they can just choose a different one. Alternately, they might be satisfied with LinkedIn or Google.
FAILURE #2
Send a drip campaign with 5+ emails
Don’t stick with a “spray and pray” e-blast approach. Sending multiple impersonal emails is a proven tactic to take potentially interested people and chase them away.
FAILURE #3
Hire a famous keynote speaker who is irrelevant to your industry
Your association promotes itself as the best place to find industry-specific resources. Don’t hire a big name celebrity as your keynote speaker who knows absolutely nothing about your industry.
FAILURE #4
Use overly complex language nobody can understand
Long paragraphs, long sentences, and long words take lots of time and brain power to decipher. If nobody can understand you, they surely won’t know why or how to register for your event.
FAILURE #5
Create busy visuals nobody can decipher
Your event branding and logo shouldn’t be difficult to read. Using a plethora of colors and fonts adds to the clutter and is guaranteed to turn people away.
FAILURE #6
Use a generic event name that is meaningless to anyone outside your association
Don’t be afraid to use your association’s acronym as your event name. After all, if prospects have never heard of you before, they won’t be compelled to attend XYZ’s Annual Conference.
FAILURE #7
Wait until the last minute to create your event website
Your event’s website is a central hub that lets people get to know your association, see how they’ll benefit from your event, and actually register. If you leave off the value proposition, agenda, and registration links until a few weeks before your conference you won’t reach attendance goals.
FAILURE #8
Be so exclusive nobody thinks they are allowed to come
Don’t hide the fact that your event is open to the public, including people who are not members of your association. When people don’t feel welcome, they will definitely not investigate further.
5 Ways to Actually Attract Prospects
Aside from doing the opposite of the failures mentioned above, here are five ways to up your event game and attract more prospects.
SUCCESS #1
Tell your story
Your prospect might have no idea who you are or why they should care. You have to convince them to care. You can’t do that with a few dozen impersonal emails. Tell your story quickly and make it easy to take action on it.
SUCCESS #2
Craft a unique value proposition
If you can’t articulate in just a few words why someone should attend your event, you need a new value proposition. Focus on benefits and differentiators. In one sentence, explain why you are worth someone’s money and time away from the office.
SUCCESS #3
Speak like a human
Messaging should be authentic and value based. Write everything at a 7th or 8th Grade level for easy comprehension. Be friendly and inviting. Make sure everything makes sense to someone who has never heard of your association before.
SUCCESS #4
Be relevant
Take time to curate a truly relevant experience that addresses your audience’s current pain points. Conduct surveys and focus groups. Choose a keynote speaker who knows your industry inside and out.
SUCCESS #5
Keep it simple!
When it comes to your messaging, visuals, agenda, or anything else related to your event, go with the simplest choice. Cut the clutter. Stay on point. Promise select takeaways that matter to the segment of prospect you’re going after.
A good default strategy for event-related prospecting is to think like a prospect. Take some time to consider the types of messages and offers you prefer to receive from other businesses and organizations. Stick with those and leave the rest of the noise behind.
Raise your hand if this sounds like your association…
You need more prospects. So you offer up a nice piece of content in exchange for an email address. Congratulations, you found some interested people! Next, you fire off an automated drip campaign with three or four “canned” emails as follow up. The majority of your interested people promptly delete these emails and unsubscribe from your list. Very few engage further, and even fewer convert. Your association continues to struggle with membership numbers, and you are very tired of marketing that just doesn’t work.
But Why Doesn’t It Work?
Literally no one wants to be spammed with a bunch of emails just because they needed some information. Would you?
There’s a better way, and it starts by thinking like a prospect. If you yourself wouldn’t want a bunch of impersonal emails, irrelevant offers, or jargon-filled sales letters, your prospects won’t either. It’s time to imagine life from your prospect’s point of view so you can improve your marketing and get the results your association needs to thrive.
Here are four steps to get you started.
Quit bombing people with communications you wouldn’t want yourself.
In addition to the prospecting example above, your association might be guilty of some of these other marketing missteps:
You send members 20 or 30 emails about your annual event every year.
You continuously email 8,000-10,000 people when you only need a few hundred interested parties.
You send 20,000 direct mail packages and get less than 30 sign-ups.
Instead, let your people tell you what they want. Look at their online behaviors. As follow-up, create multiple workflows based on how people have engaged with your messages and offers. Personalize the customer journey as much as possible.
For example, if 50 people downloaded your content, send those 50 people a thoughtful direct mail piece. Don’t mail more than 300. Look at your list and whittle it down to the most likely prospects.
Shift how you think about your events and membership.
Thinking like a prospect means acknowledging that there’s a lot to be worried about right now. Things like war, Covid, and the economy add to the pressures of daily work. People might not have money or time to join your association or travel to your event, and they might have other concerns as well.
More importantly, they’ve figured out how to live without your event for the last two years and they’re still doing fine. Online resources have effectively taken the place of your association for many people. It’s not realistic to think that everyone will rush to your event simply because it’s once again occurring in person.
You will need to be patient as you entice people to attend or join. Given all of today’s challenges, it will take more time than you’d like to nurture your leads in a logical, thoughtful, personalized manner.
Make a dramatic change in what you say.
Speak in a conversational tone. After all, that’s what you prefer when others talk to you. Ditch abstract, overused words like “thought leadership” and “strategic connections.” Swap those for concrete terms that promise benefits. Focus on what sets you apart from competitors.
Communicate in words an eighth grader would understand. Yes, you are a professional organization with in-depth, complex information and resources. But your marketing has to be simple. It has to engage people quickly or they will hit delete and move on.
Rethink your use of marketing automation.
Marketing automation isn’t a “set it and forget it” tool. To be successful, you must set up multiple workflows based on your audience’s goals and pain points, your organization’s resources, and your users’ actual behaviors. Then you need to make adjustments as you go based on performance.
Ideally, marketing automation captures data that you can use to customize future communications and improve your numbers. It helps you reach more people with personalized messages and offers. Too often, however, associations use automation as a way to put their marketing on autopilot. At that point, it’s just more spam.
For every campaign you launch, stop and ask yourself what a member or prospect would want. Is it really another email? Or is it a phone call from a helpful human? Additional useful content? A direct mail piece? Something else?
Start Making Changes Now
Giving people individualized attention is hard to do, and there is no “golden ticket” that will instantly improve your numbers. But you have to start somewhere, and you have to start now. As the last few years have shown us, anything can happen. Better marketing now means your association will be poised to thrive no matter what the future holds.
Think like a prospect is No. 3 in our ebook, 3 Action Steps Associations Can Take to Achieve Goals. What are numbers 1 and 2? Download it and see.
The age of the hybrid event is here. As associations contemplate returning to in-person gatherings, the advantages of virtual—including serious time and money savings for your members—can’t be ignored. To engage the largest audience in the most personalized way possible, a hybrid event that combines in-person offerings with virtual ones is the way to go.
The hybrid model comes with some challenges, of course, including logistics, technology, engagement, and more. But the juice is worth the squeeze. Following a few best practices will help you navigate this new frontier to maximize the benefits and engage your base for years to come.
What is a hybrid event?
A hybrid event is any in-person event that has some online component. This could include a livestream of the in-person sessions, on-demand content, a gamification component, a remote keynote speaker, a Q&A with both in-person and online audiences, or any number of other possibilities.
There are no rules here and no audience expectations because everything is new. For example, you might discover that your event becomes 80% virtual and only 20% in-person based on your audience preferences.
What are the advantages of a hybrid event?
If your association is like most, you’re eager to replace lost event revenue from 2020 and fuel future growth by retuning to a full-fledged in-person conference and expo. Plenty of your members are chomping at the bit to get out of their homes/offices and connect in person once gain.
However, budget cuts and lingering fears related to COVID-19 mean people won’t be returning to your event in droves just yet. In-person attendance will likely be low for years to come. A virtual event offers an opportunity to serve your base with high-quality content from afar.
A hybrid event is the best of both worlds. It’s a chance to regain the magic of an in-person experience while engaging people virtually—and generating revenue on both fronts. Chances are you invested in virtual event infrastructure in 2020, so the potential for hybrid is already there.
What are some best practices for hybrid events?
1. Simplify your offerings based on your association’s differentiators.
It’s easy for your event to become a three-ring circus of sessions, certifications, whiz bang technology platforms, cocktail hours, rock bands, and more. Some of this was a risk before the pandemic. Now more than ever, your event (and all your association’s offerings) should focus on what you do best. What sets you apart from competitors? What is the highest-value service you provide for your members? What do you offer that people can’t find anywhere else? Highlight these differentiators in your event marketing as well.
2. Understand your audience.
The answers to a few key questions about your members and prospects will guide the decisions you make about your hybrid event—including the size of your venue, registration price, engagement strategies, and the percentage of your event that goes online.
Are your members and prospects ready and willing to travel again?
What is the No. 1 reason people attend your event?
Why might people NOT attend?
Do people place a higher value on your networking or your content?
Are people looking for certifications? Can these be delivered online?
How important is a hands-on, face-to-face exhibit hall experience?
What is the ROI of in-person offerings compared to virtual ones?
What does your association offer that can only take place in person?
3. Choose your tech last.
There are hundreds of tech solutions that you could include in your hybrid event. Most of them aren’t actually necessary, and some of them add unneeded complexity and the potential for technical difficulties. After answering all the questions in No. 2 above, choose the tools that will best serve your base. For more insights on technology, have a look at New Tech Won’t Save Your Crappy Marketing.
4. Focus on value.
A big-name speaker fills seats but may not offer insights your audience needs to hear. A well-known entertainer may get rave reviews from attendees without generating enough ROI for your association. Focus on value first. Ask yourself: Does this help people solve their challenges? Does it enable goals? Does it present new possibilities? Does it foster meaningful connections? Is it purposeful? Does it align with our cause? Also consider whether it generates ROI for your association.
Seize this Huge Opportunity
A hybrid event is a huge opportunity for your association to serve the needs of your members in a curated, personalized way while generating much-needed revenue. Amid today’s challenges, people are tackling more responsibilities than ever. Be part of the solution. Distill your event down to only the most powerful resources and deliver them in a way that honors people’s preferences. Cut everything else.
What to say visually and when to say it to reach your association’s membership and retention goals
These days, the social media canvas looks like a Jackson Pollack splatter painting. There are more fonts, colors, and graphics than ever. More politically charged messages. More impersonal ads. More videos. More virtual offerings. More noise.
Your audience has more going on too. More screen time. More responsibilities. More uncertainty. More stress. Amid all this “more,” people are craving, well, a little bit less—less clutter, less distraction, less dog and pony show, less B.S.
If your association wants to have any chance of cutting through the chaos to reach your audience—and reach your membership goals for the year—you have to strengthen and simplify your visual presence. Here are five best practices to help you fine-tune what to say visually and when to say it.
1. Take a minimalist approach
Simplify your branding to include only the most compelling, essential, easy-to-grasp elements. Go back to the basics and focus on composition, structure, and form. Take a lesson from history, when language was simpler. We heard about one designer who used ancient rune symbols from 150 AD for font inspiration.
2. Don’t be fooled by trends
Stay away from trendy design elements that can quickly be overdone. At the moment, everyone is jumping on the gradient bandwagon. You might think being trendy shows that your association is fresh and modern. The reality is that you’re just blending in with everyone else on social media, and your conversion rates will suffer as a result. A simple, clean, bold approach will go farther than the latest design fad.
3. Humanize your visuals
People relate to other people better than to impersonal organizations. Your visual branding must show your human side to attract members and prospects. A tip from neuroscience: Show people’s faces. Human faces enhance a website’s visual appeal, efficiency, and trustworthiness. One study determined that users find it easier to perform tasks on websites with faces.1
4. Go easy on the illustrations
Illustrations can be useful for depicting technical subject matter, complex emotions, or difficult topics. Use them sparingly, however, as too many cartoons can hurt your professional image.
5. Refine your timing
Recognize that people need different types, lengths, and formats of content depending on where they are in the buying cycle. Tailor your visuals and comms accordingly:
Awareness phase: Providing entertainment can capture your audience’s initial attention and entice them to view more of your message.1 From there, blog posts, social content and e-books can address an acute problem your audience is trying to solve. Keep things simple and fairly brief. People don’t necessarily know you or trust you enough to watch long videos, read lots of text, or interpret complex data.
Consideration phase: Provide meatier content to help people evaluate your association’s offerings compared to competitors. Use visuals such as graphs, infographics, and illustrations to aid comprehension of complex topics. Consider adding email marketing in addition to retargeting and social media ads.
Decision phase: Ask for action. By this stage, people have already made up their minds about your organization. They just need a nudge to convert or go another direction. Messaging and visuals at this stage should be clear, concise, brief, and straight to the point.
6. Be purposeful
Keep in mind that the wrong visuals can damage your brand and credibility. One study of Instagram posts by orthodontists showed that personal images of family members hurt the office’s credibility and decreased the likelihood of being selected by patients.2 Only include images if they truly show the value of your association.
The power of visuals
Don’t overlook the power of visuals in your membership and retention marketing. Great visuals communicate on their own—sometimes better than text. They can also work in harmony with your marketing copy to drive home key points. Fresh, bold, clear, simple visuals can make or break your campaigns and your goals for the year.
Sources:
Consumer Behaviour through the Eyes of Neurophysiological Measures: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends, Patrizia Cherubino et al.
The Effects of Images Posted to Social Media by Orthodontists on Public Perception of Professional Credibility and Willingness to Become a Client, Thiago Martins Meira, et al.
6 best practices for associations to enhance virtual offerings
As the pandemic continues, many organizations are looking for ways to replace lost event revenue, attract and retain more members, and better serve their base from afar. New technology seems like the perfect solution, and the possibilities are endless. You could do more on social media, revamp your website, create an interactive content library, or launch a series of Zoom events. You could even add artificial intelligence or virtual reality event environments.
But not so fast. While you have a golden opportunity to better serve your members during a time of disruption, you also have the potential to fail miserably. If your brand is a hodgepodge of messages and images, moving everything to a new platform means you will now have a high-tech hodgepodge of the same messages and images. New tech solutions only work when you have a solid foundation based on your audience’s needs and your organization’s core competencies.
In short, new tech won’t save your crappy marketing, but these six best practices can help you enhance your virtual offerings strategically to drive revenues, engagement, and retention.
1. Examine your audience
Be specific about who you serve. Know their job titles, years in the business, pain points, demographics, level of familiarity with your subject matter, preferred communication channels, and more. Define your audience’s primary archetype—that’s their universal character type—to help you further understand your base and how best to interact with them.
2. Articulate your value proposition
Once you know who you serve, take some time to define how you serve them. Be specific with tangible benefits. This is not your mission or vision statement. It tells your audience what’s in it for them. Here are a few real-world examples:
American Staffing Association: Create better lives, better businesses, and a better economy.
Intuit: Simplify the business of life. Ladders: Move up in your career.
Bitly: Shorten. Share. Measure
3. Develop standard messaging
Messaging includes two parts: how you talk (voice) and what you say (message).
Voice—If your brand were a person, how would that person speak? Conversational vs. academic, casual vs. formal, technical vs. accessible, funny vs. straightforward, edgy vs. conservative, etc.
Message—What information will you convey? Ex: Who you are, product/event descriptions, key member benefits, why join, etc.
First, define your voice. Next, develop a messaging tree with standardized language in that voice. A message tree can help unify your internal team so you can better convey your organization’s value to your audience.
4. Craft unified visuals
A solid brand has a unified look and feel. Be fresh and modern. Focus on people. Show you’re committed to diversity and inclusion. Avoid mixing cartoons with photographic images. Choose a limited number of fonts and colors. Take a minimalist approach. Your brand visuals should contribute to your credibility as an organization and reassure people that they’ve come to the right place.
5. Define your strategy
Sketch out a plan for attracting leads and nurturing them over the long term. Include key dates, your budget, formats, content, and offers. Know your goals and KPIs. Determine how you will score leads and follow up based on each score. Don’t launch a single promotion without knowing how it fits into the bigger picture.
6. Choose your tech
A wise woman once said, “Don’t doubt you can, just wonder why you want to.” There are lots of tech solutions out there with tons of features, but if your audience doesn’t need or want them you’re just wasting your time and money. A few considerations:
ROI—Does the solution generate measurable value (ex: increased traffic, clicks, likes, shares, lead forms completed, etc.)? Would a simpler solution generate just as much value?
Ease of implementation and use—Is it relatively quick to implement? Is it easy for your internal team to use? Is it quick and easy for members to take full advantage of?
Potential for bugs and problems—Aim for simple over complex. If your virtual reality event platform goes down the day of your event, do you have a backup plan? (This happened to one of our clients!)
You’ll notice that choosing your tech should be the LAST step. Don’t just jump on the latest high-tech trend. Solidify your value prop and branding first. Create a detailed strategy. Then make an informed decision on which solution will best help you achieve your goals.
Chances are your website started out great. It was simple, clean, and easy to navigate. But websites often take on a life of their own. Things get messy as you create more pages, add plug-ins, and post new content. Before long, your helpful online resource becomes a tangle of words, images, forms, and password-protected content. You, Dr. Frankenstein, have created a monster.
But never fear. Websites have a pretty short shelf life (or at least they should). If it’s been a few years since your organization has purposefully revamped your website—to throw out the old, clean up the clutter, and update it for modern times—it is critical to do so now.
Everything is virtual
In the post-COVID-19 world, your website takes on new significance. It is the home base for your brand, your mission, your offerings, and your community of followers. It could be years before people feel comfortable interacting in person once again. Until then, your website needs to do some heavy lifting to deliver on your promises, engage and connect people, provide products and services, and do so much more. And you can’t accomplish all of this with an outdated, ineffective site.
Sure you could go wild with high-tech features like virtual reality or artificial intelligence. We will likely see more and more advanced technology on the web in the near future. But for most organizations, this just isn’t necessary. Plus, it won’t make up for outdated content, confusing navigation, and incongruous images. Solidify the foundation first. Then think about adding bells and whistles.
8 ways to improve your website
Here are eight back-to-the-basics web improvements you can make now to help you engage people, convert prospects, and build loyalty in a virtual world.
1. Out with the old
Create a process for regularly retiring old offerings and outdated materials. Take a hard look at what is on your website to make sure it all still applies to what your organization delivers today.
2. Less is more
Part of your role as an organization is to curate resources and information because your target audience doesn’t have time to do it themselves. Your website should serve up only the most helpful, time- and money-saving, life-enhancing information, products, and services. Ask yourself: “What is the least people need to know?”
3. Freshen up your design
An effective modern website is fresh and clean. It has plenty of white space. Images are human, professional, diverse, and uncomplicated. Keep the number of fonts and colors to a minimum. Make it easy for people to see what they need and take action.
4. Simplify navigation
A beautiful website is useless if people can’t find what they’re looking for. Simply your navigation using these best practices:
Identify 4-6 buckets that your site’s content falls into for your homepage navigation headings.
Avoid making people click too many times to arrive at a desired resource. Aim to get people to their destination in three clicks or fewer.
Add quick links on your home page to the most popular areas of your site.
Enable keyword search for even faster navigation.
5. Update your copy
Edit references to in-person offerings that no longer exist or anything else that’s changed due to COVID-19. Then go deeper to make sure all your messaging is clear, concise, and aligned with your core brand.
Focus on benefits and value vs. features. Use action verbs. Answer your audience’s question: “What’s in it for me?”
6. Be smarter with user data
Turn your website into a data-gathering machine that helps you create laser-focused marketing. Capture information such as user demographics, behaviors, preferences, and topics of interest. Then, automate integration with your other marketing platforms for timely follow-up and targeted lead nurturing that drive conversions.
7. Consider UX
User experience, or UX, considers all interactions a user has with your organization and how each element involved shapes the perception of your brand. For your website, good UX design focuses on what the user needs and makes it easy and enjoyable to navigate your site.
8. Stay active
Designate personnel to maintain interactive components of your site. Regularly moderate discussion forums, job boards, chat boxes, or message boards, to ensure productive interactions and gain valuable insights into the mindset of your audience. This will also add an important human touch to your brand.
Don’t miss out
A fresh, modern, up-to-date website has so much value—in potential leads, sales, members, customers, credibility, brand recognition, and so much more. It’s worth investing time and money to transform Frankenstein’s monster into a purpose-built site that serves and delights your base.
Answer this question quickly, and in one word: What is the number one reason you believe people attend your event?
We would be astounded if your answer wasn’t networking.
We would be equally astounded if you agree with what we’re about to say next: Networking isn’t actually why people show up at events.
That’s right. It’s not about networking. Or at least, not about networking as you are defining it and creating messages around it.
Whether or not you agree with us about networking not being the top draw for events, it’s a bit of a moot point anyway, since we are living in the COVID-19 era, where events must be completely recast as virtual. So, if you’ve been counting on in-person networking as the draw, you have a problem.
But . . . did we mention networking was never actually the main draw? Before you insist loudly that we don’t know what we’re talking about, let us clarify something.
The anticipation of connecting with others definitely nudges members to register for events. But what really sells them and in particular attracts younger members is the notion of connecting with like-minded souls around a cause or movement.
The great news is that members can connect with one another around a common purpose without meeting in person. Is gathering in real time and space the ideal way to do it? Yes. But we’re all out of luck, because nobody of any real size can do in-person events right now. We are all starting from that same place of, Oh crap, what are we going to do?
What you are not going to be able to do is rely on your old messaging.
So, to recap before we move on:
Your old messages about networking won’t work now.
Your old messages about networking weren’t that great anyway, so don’t spend too much time bemoaning their fate.
If you can’t repurpose your old messaging, the only choice is to create new messaging. While we completely understand the level of stress this is causing, we are here to tell you it’s actually an amazing opportunity to be a leader and do things differently.
How will you show up for people?
Some people’s lives have been completely upended by COVID-19, devastated even. They have lost jobs, dreams, and perhaps even loved ones. In all of this tumult, people both need support and are eager to lend support to their peers.
Your members may have several places they go for professional support, but if your association isn’t the first stop, you are missing a big opportunity. While we may be starting to fatigue of messaging having to do with the coronavirus, your members still need that sense of connection to others, to know they are not in this alone.
This is the time to pull members in and ask basic things like: What do you need and how can we help? Working from a place of empathy isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do. Because when the pandemic is over, people will remember who showed up for them.
That means that anything you were phoning in before, or, say, had a place on your website that performed this function but didn’t do it very well (i.e., job search, loan and grant resources, message boards, mentoring) should now be well-designed, easy to use, and highly robust.
Once you have re-established your association as a support system, not just a place to pay dues to, then you can start to ask bigger questions like: What do you care about in your work? What change do you want to make? Do you want to connect with other like-minded people and work toward that vision with us?
This may have been called networking in a previous generation, but the younger generation likens it more to joining a movement. They will be far more likely to join and to show up for you if you first show up for them.
You need a new playbook and new messaging
Traditionally, most associations come up with a few key messages around networking and simply repurpose them year after year. The same 30 percent of members show up, because they are probably going to show up no matter what.
But now, there is no more showing up in the traditional sense. Your event is no longer about a venue, a plane ticket, an app with keynote speakers and breakout presentations, and a nebulous promise of “networking opportunities.”
Your event can’t be what it was, but it also can’t simply be a series of Zoom presentations, interspersed with scavenger hunts and happy hours. We are already zoning out on Zoom. It’s not that the technology doesn’t work. But it’s not a 1:1 transfer. You can’t merely put in-person programming on a virtual platform and call it done.
You have to create a completely new playbook—a new way to do things, and new messaging that pulls people in and brings them together on a virtual platform.
So, how can you make people feel special, supported, and connected to something bigger? What can you create that reminds them of the purpose, the thing your association is collectively working toward?
Whatever was true before the pandemic about your association’s cause or purpose is still true, but what is the 2.0 version of it? Why is it more urgent, more important than ever, or more exciting than ever? Those things are where your key messages should flow from.
Purposeful gathering, rallying around a cause, making connections with others, learning and growing as a community, supporting each other’s careers and goals, and having fun together: These things are all essential right now. They don’t stop in times of crisis. They only grow more important.
As you rebuild your event and reframe the way you talk about your event, begin there.
Associations that experience a drop in membership often believe it’s because of price. They think some people just aren’t willing to pay the high cost of dues, events, and products. But that’s not really true. Price isn’t the problem. Value is.
People will pay a lot for things that add value to their companies, careers, and lives. What they won’t do is shell out money year after year without getting something real and valuable as a return on their investment. If you think your association has a pricing problem, what you really have is a value problem. And a value problem is really a value proposition problem.
Movie theater vs Netflix
Imagine you run a movie theater (assuming the pandemic is over). You’re focused on delivering the best possible experience to your customers—comfortable seats, the biggest screen, the best sound, the tastiest popcorn. You are hands down the best movie theater in town. But there are always some empty seats. What’s the problem? You’ve failed to realize that many people prefer to stay home and watch Netflix.
Too often, associations lose sight of what their members actually want. They endlessly promote networking, education, and certification, not realizing that members might need something else. Or, maybe, that they need the same things but packaged in a different way. It’s no wonder associations struggle with membership acquisition and retention. They’re too busy trying to cram people into their outdated value proposition when they should be focused on how to best serve members today.
How to fix your value problem
If people aren’t leaving your association now, they soon will be. When the recession hits, people will cut whatever they think costs too much. They might not renew their membership in your association because money is tight. What they’re really saying is the value isn’t there for the price you’re charging.
Logically, dropping membership is a terrible idea. Especially in difficult times, your members need you for your advice, resources, and access to a community of helpful, empathetic peers. Somehow you need to communicate just how much value you can add to your members’ businesses, careers, and lives. You must prove yourself so vital that people can’t imagine getting by without you.
Before you can do that, you need to dig deep to uncover what matters most to your members and prospects. Whatever that is might be different than it was a year ago, and it will likely change a year from now. A survey won’t tell the whole story; it’s too limiting. Instead, you need ongoing conversations and focus groups (easily conducted via videoconferencing during COVID-19). You need to keep asking “Why?” until you get to the heart of their goals, roles, responsibilities, aspirations, pain points, and challenges.
Why ask why
On a multiple-choice survey, your members might select education as the No. 1 reason to join your association. In a focus group, you can go deeper. Pose the question: Why is education important?
Imagine what your members might say: “I want to…”
make informed decisions that save my company money
stand out from colleagues and get a promotion
work more efficiently to improve my work-life balance
help my company innovate and advance in our industry
make the most of our limited budget to help more customers
understand how new laws apply to my business
Depending on what your members say, you might discover that “education” really means efficiency, innovation, career development, compliance, or something else. The more you ask “Why?” the easier it will be to understand your base and their most pressing concerns. From there, you can match your value proposition and your offerings to their needs. You can innovate wisely to stay relevant. You can also eliminate anything that no longer adds value, saving you time and money and helping your audience to see only those things that matter most.
It’s not about you
Trying to be a movie theater when your members want Netflix is a losing battle. Associations exist to serve members, not the other way around. Focus on value and your membership and retention goals will take care of themselves.
In the past, associations thrived on in-person events, networking, education, and certifications—the more the merrier. But for years there has been a shift away from this old thinking to a modern approach where digital is king and people are less enticed by “stuff.” This shift was happening gradually until COVID-19 slammed on the accelerator. What began as a strategy to attract younger members is now essential to serving members of all ages. Your old business model is officially broken, and engagement is about to take a nosedive. It’s time to learn from your younger members so you can fix your business model, drive engagement, and thrive.
What We Know About Younger Members
Younger members grew up with Google and are used to instant gratification.
They’re careful with their money and slow to make a purchase.
They value community and purpose.
They trust people more than corporations.
They’re highly adaptable and can react quickly to any crisis or disruption.
They live online and are comfortable working and networking virtually.
A New Reality for Boomers and Millennials Alike
When COVID-19 hit, even the Boomers had to pivot and adapt. Here’s what the new reality looks like for members of all ages:
Google is the go-to resource (and your biggest competitor).
Money is an issue for everybody as the next recession looms.
Community means more now than ever.
We can get by with less stuff in our lives.
We don’t have to be there in person.
We can adapt to almost anything.
We can learn to use new technologies and work virtually.
Just like that, your association’s old business model centered on in-person events and endless offerings doesn’t work anymore. But the need for resources and support hasn’t changed. You have a golden opportunity to reinvent your association and serve members better than ever before.
What’s Out? What’s In?
Fixing your business model is a matter of removing clutter and adding value. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way forward.
OUT: In-person only resources
IN: Digital everything
Crisis or no crisis, your members don’t always have the time, money, or inclination to travel to your annual conference or even attend a local networking event. You need digital resources people can access quickly on their own terms. Templates, content downloads, virtual networking, job boards, webinars, and podcasts are just a few ideas. Break your event into time-conscious virtual tidbits, such as hour-long webinars, information packets, or online discussion panels.
OUT: Too much stuff
IN: Real resources that answer “What’s in it for me?”
Consider the cereal aisle at the grocery store. There are 16 different kinds of Cheerios that water down the brand and overwhelm the consumer. Your association faces a similar problem with your events, certifications, and education. Don’t be Cheerios. Focus instead on your core competencies. What do you offer that your members can’t get anywhere else? Which events deliver the biggest return for your members’ time and money? Don’t worry about revenue. Worry about delivering actual value and the revenue will take care of itself.
OUT: Sales pitches and corporate speak
IN: Meaningful, authentic human connections
The days of slick sales pitches and impersonal “professional” language are over. People are tired of being sold to, and they demand authenticity and transparency. The voice of your association should be human, conversational, and personal. Tell stories. Create online communities. Whenever possible, connect members and prospects with each other and get out of the way. Third-party endorsements are far more powerful than messaging straight from your organization.
OUT: Impersonal communications
IN: Behavior-based communications that are mindful of the customer journey
Nobody wants another impersonal eblast. Instead, use marketing automation to deliver timely, relevant content through marketing automation. Let each individual’s browsing, email, and social media behaviors dictate the next steps in your messaging.
If you can master how to attract, engage, and retain your younger members, you can do it for anyone. Start by throwing out old thinking and extraneous clutter. Then, add in a modern digital approach that delivers value through authentic human connections and a personalized customer journey.
If you’re feeling the financial squeeze from cancelled or postponed events, buckle up. There’s more pain ahead as a recession looms large and fears abound. You need a proactive plan to replace lost event revenue so you can ride out the storm and ensure success into the future. Here are three essential steps to take right now.
1. Attract more members
There is power in numbers. The more people you can rally to your organization, the better off you will be financially in the long term. Invest in member acquisition now to ensure you have a solid base to sustain your association.
2. Focus on being a resource
Of course you need revenue to survive as an association, but focusing solely on money right now is insensitive and tone deaf. A phased approach to revenue generation is your best bet.
Start with empathy. Be a trusted resource for members in a time of crisis. Give things away for free if you have the means. Avoid overt sales pitches. Retaining your base and building a following now can ensure long-term loyalty that will turn into revenue later.
When things start to improve, you can be more aggressive with money-making initiatives, for example:
Simultaneous in-person and virtual events
Vendor-sponsored webinars or Twitter chats
Advertising (especially while webinar attendance is high)
Gated content for lead generation
Paid content or resources for direct revenue streams
3. Go virtual with your event
Transition your event to the virtual space so you can continually deliver value to your base, crisis or no crisis. Use these strategies to help you make the move:
Host smaller virtual events
Instead of transferring your entire multiday event online, consider breaking it into smaller sections, like webinars, livestream keynotes, and panel discussions. Many of your members simply don’t have time for a two- or three-day event. Smaller, bite-sized resources are more feasible, especially during a crisis.
Offer on-demand resources
On-demand webinars, information packets, resource libraries, or online portals can offer the same value as your in-person events with an added advantage: Each individual can choose when and how they want to engage with your association.
Build online communities
Your event gives like-minded people a place to belong. Foster meaningful online communities to maintain that camaraderie even when they can’t be together in person. Post open-ended questions to spark discussions. Share videos that showcase member success stories. Offer free downloads that solve pain points. Host virtual happy hours.
Be a conduit for connections
Your in-person event puts all your members, vendors, and industry leaders literally in the same room. While you can’t exactly do that virtually, your association can still connect the dots to help all your constituents get what they need. Job boards, Q&A forums, hotlines, virtual networking events, online marketplaces, and member portals can help people connect directly so they can learn, share, collaborate, and achieve their goals.
Offer insider deals
For many associations, the annual event is a place for special deals and discounts. Work with vendors and industry partners to make exclusive offers to your members and virtual event attendees. Offer free or discounted association membership to retain your base and ensure they will be around to make purchases from you down the road.
Replacing lost event revenue is a matter of identifying the high-value components of your association—the pieces that serve your members best—and repackaging them for easy, convenient consumption by the people who need them most. Focus on serving members and the revenue will follow.
We know how diligently associations are working to adapt during this pandemic and to engage members through virtual events. We commend associations for their resiliency and creativity!
But what’s next? It’s the question most of us are asking with a mix of trepidation and hope. We hope things will turn around, but we fear they won’t. We hope normal returns sooner rather than later, but we fear it won’t.
Hope and fear are necessary emotions for processing complicated feelings. They don’t help you come up with a good plan though. And what your association needs now is a good plan. Or put another way, a map that points the way to what comes after all of this.
We have some suggestions about who can lead you there, and what you can expect to find.
Young people are the bright spot
We hear all of the same things you hear about young people: they’re not joiners; they don’t want to pay for things; they can’t commit to one job or one organization; you can’t get their attention.
It’s not that we don’t believe these points. After all, we see the same data you see about Millennial job hopping. Rather, it’s that we know it isn’t the whole story.
When the coronavirus hit the U.S., there was an assumption for a few weeks that Millennials were defying the recommendations to stay home, especially as pictures of young people at parties and crowding Florida beaches started cropping up all over social media. Millennials were quick to point out the generational mistake: it was actually the oldest cohort of Generation Z that was partying it up. In fact, Millennials were growing increasingly frustrated with their Boomer parents who they felt weren’t taking the virus seriously enough (captured humorously in this “open letter” op-ed).
Even more interesting were the memes and Instagram graphics that Millennials and Generation X started posting to rally support and evoke the idea of duty. These posts said things like, “Your grandparents were asked to fight a world war. You are being asked to stay home,” or showed beleaguered healthcare workers on the front lines with captions like, “I stay home for them.”
There are, of course, individual and regional variations in how young professionals have responded (and continue to respond) to the COVID-19 situation, but the abiding response has been one of “We are in this together.”
Younger people may change jobs more often and be more reluctant to pay for a feature they can find for free, but they care deeply about being part of a movement. They care about identifying with a purpose greater than themselves.
And also this: they are adaptable, which is everything right now. For example, though young people deeply value face to face connection, they’ve embraced the virtual work arounds, eagerly participating in your Zoom happy hours, your webinars, and your cyber conferences.
This is the bright spot of this dark situation, because it means that younger people are ready to take up the mantle of your association. That is, if you give them something real and deep they can believe in—a true mission and purpose they can rally around.
Your plan for what’s next
Your engagement may be very high right now, because a crisis invites engagement and the desire to connect with one another.
What about when it passes? What will these younger members rally around next?
You can’t wait until the pandemic begins to lift to decide that rallying point—especially because it will likely leave a long, painful recession in its place. As hard as it is to think about what comes on the heels of this, you must start planning now.
FIRST, if you have an event scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2020, you must accept that it will be dramatically different than what you anticipated when you first planned the event—starting with the fact that it may not happen at all. Or if it does, some members still may not be comfortable traveling.
How will you replace that revenue stream? How can you still connect people around a message? Keep in mind that people will be fatigued from COVID-19 messaging by then. You need a NEW message—not a crisis message, and not the outdated value proposition you were using before the crisis hit.
What will that message be? How can it work either in-person or virtually? Be clear on that now, versus having to be reactionary and make decisions on-the-fly.
SECOND, what will you put in place now to ensure that your association is leading the way, rather than following or being reactive?
Our tendency when we see recession coming is to tighten our belts, to duck for cover and resort to a fear and scarcity mentality. Instead, how can you take this awesome engagement you have now and monetize and build on it? You can only do this successfully if you invest in true digital marketing tools right now.
We started our agency in 1999, which means we ran our business through two major recessions: 2001 and 2008. Both times, we saw it as an opportunity to pivot, to dive deeper into work that matters.
This is the same mindset we have now. We believe that a shifting economy is a chance to rethink everything. We know what this journey looks like, and we find ourselves once again staring down a path marked “before” and “after.”
Come with us to the “after.” You may not believe it, but it can be even better than the “before.”
Want a brainstorming call to talk about what’s next for your association? Schedule time to talk to us! We are sheltering in place, thinking hard, and creating some innovative and amazing campaigns for associations.
Amid all the chaos and heartbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are truly inspiring stories of people coming together to help each other. Your association can be one of those stories. This is your opportunity to be a resource to your membership, to add value to their lives and businesses, and to help them through this difficult time.
Here are five ways you can help your members during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
Provide COVID-19 information
Associations are reporting jampacked webinars with thousands of participants, a sure sign that your members are eager for information and guidance. Topics include CDC recommendations for hygiene and social distancing, how to apply for relief loans and grants, and how COVID-19 affects your industry specifically.
While busy webinars indicate increased engagement, you can do even more. Many members are focused on immediate business needs and don’t have an hour to spend on a virtual event. Use webinar content to create quick resources like checklists, flow charts, infographics, or tip sheets. Your busy members will be grateful for curated content that helps them navigate this situation.
To further drive engagement, include time for live Q&A or provide a post-event feedback forum. This will help you gauge what issues are most important to your members and assure them that you’re listening and responding to their concerns.
Offer teleworking resources
Many of your members find themselves working from home for the first time. Help them navigate this new frontier by providing resources on setting a schedule, using video conferencing, maintaining cybersecurity, setting teleworking expectations for employees, and more. Consider hosting a virtual networking event via videoconferencing to demonstrate best practices and answer any questions.
Discounted membership for next year
COVID-19 will no doubt leave financial damage in its wake for a lot of your members, causing many to rethink membership and event participation to save money. Stay ahead of what could be a mass exodus from your organization by offering free or discounted membership for next year. What you do now will determine the success of your organization in the months and years to come.
Host mini virtual events
Going virtual can help you serve members and recover some lost revenue from cancelled in-person events. But be mindful of people’s time right now. Avoid shifting your entire event to the virtual space. Instead, see what you can break into bite-sized content for smaller individual events, for example a livecast from your keynote, online panel discussion, virtual networking session, or pieces of helpful content in a digital resource bundle.
Give people a platform to help
People want to help, whether it’s by donating masks, offering free services, or mobilizing in their own unique ways. Your association can provide a platform to connect the dots. Consider creating a special website or communications channel, such as COVIDResponseTeam@YourOrganization.com, to answer questions or match needs with resources.
Rise to the challenge
Instead of letting COVID-19 or some other crisis cripple your association, you can rise to the challenge and help your members get through it too. As a member-driven association, you’re already an expert at bringing people together and rallying around a cause. Right now, overcoming COVID-19 is the cause. The more you can serve as a resource for people or even a place for them to voice their fears, the more likely it is that members will stay loyal to your association now and long after this situation is over.
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about with COVID-19, you suddenly find yourself working from home. That means carving out space for an office, troubleshooting Zoom meetings, and trying to stay connected with your team and your membership…not to mention actually getting some work done! For many, this new reality can be overwhelming.
If teleworking has you flustered, here are 5 best practices to help you preserve your sanity and improve productivity.
1. Rise and shine
Trading your commute for a brief jaunt down the hall might leave you feeling lost in the mornings. It’s a good idea to maintain your regular morning rituals, such as setting your alarm clock and getting out of your pajamas. Enjoy coffee or breakfast with your spouse, kids, or roommates for social interaction and to ease into your day. Without a drive, you might even have extra time for exercise, meditation or chores. Avoid heading directly from your bed to your computer, which can blur the lines between your personal and professional lives.
2. Get some space
If work is staring you in the face day and night, you’re likely to feel stressed and stretched thin. Create a dedicated office space that you can leave behind at the end of the day—even if it means closing your laptop and moving it off the kitchen table. Let your family know that they should respect your office space during the day. Put up a sign if necessary (ex: Shhh! Mary’s Working 8 a.m.-5 p.m.) To help you focus, avoid cluttering your home office with food, toys, laundry, or other distractions.
3. Keep a set schedule
The best way to be successful while working from home is to have a set schedule. Determine when you will start each morning, when to break for lunch, and when to call it a day in the evening. Begin each day by reviewing any upcoming meetings or project deadlines. Consider holding a daily morning huddle with your team to check in, stay connected, and help everyone stay on track.
4. Establish boundaries
When your work and home are one in the same, you might feel pressured to be available 24/7. That will lead to burnout in a hurry. Once you have a set schedule, share it with colleagues so they have realistic expectations about your availability and responsiveness. Don’t forget to keep your members and industry partners informed about your operating hours as well. At the end of the day, sign off any chat programs and silence your phone so notifications don’t intrude into your personal time. Avoid responding to communications after hours or on weekends.
5. Stay connected
The isolation of teleworking can take a toll on morale, and productivity can suffer as a result. Use technology tools, such as video conferencing, to maintain human connections. Try a phone call instead of an email for more in-depth conversations. Check in with members and industry partners. Consider launching a brief daily e-newsletter to share positive news. Your association is united by a common cause. Reminding everyone of that cause can lift spirits and rally your team to keep moving forward despite these difficult times.
Rumblings of the next global recession make headlines almost daily. If the predictions are true, associations could be headed for difficult times when it comes to member engagement and event attendance. To make matters worse, most association leaders use flawed logic when navigating an economic downturn. But not all the news is negative. An impending recession or other crisis is an opportunity to strengthen your association so you can thrive no matter what the future brings.
Here are five recession myths that hurt your association plus advice on how to shift your thinking to ensure resilience into the future.
MYTH 1: Your value proposition must change for a down market.
REALITY: Your association needs a strong value proposition always. “Things” like events, content, and thought leadership are easy for your audience to cut. However, it’s tougher to cut a cause and a community they are passionate about. That’s why you need a solid value proposition that answers the question: “What am I paying for?” Lead with your cause and prove you offer real, tangible value. Show you are a resource people can depend on. Emphasize the value of your network. Be so helpful that your base can’t imagine getting through a recession—or an average work week—without you.
MYTH 2: Associations should reduce programs that don’t produce revenues.
REALITY: Your members rely on your association for resources that enhance their careers and make their lives better. Some of these resources don’t generate measurable ROI for your association, yet they are invaluable to building trust with members, driving engagement, and creating loyal brand ambassadors. It’s a bad idea to cut programs based on revenues alone. It’s a great idea, on the other hand, to cut anything that doesn’t generate some sort of value for your members. A recession is an opportunity to examine your programs, services, publications, events, and other resources. Cut anything that could distract members from your core value.
MYTH 3: Low engagement is a red flag for a recession.
REALITY: Low engagement is a red flag that your value proposition is broken and your strategy is flawed. Many associations already see a drop in engagement, and a recession isn’t here yet. If one does arrive, engagement will get even worse and event attendance will decline along with it. Recession or not, now is the time to be proactive with modern digital marketing that differentiates your association, builds trust with members and prospects, and delivers value over time.
MYTH 4: It’s a good idea to decrease staff and marketing.
REALITY: Many associations think they need to lay off staff, eliminate outsourcing, decrease marketing funds, and review vendor contracts to cut potential excess from the budget. All of these are terrible ideas. Laying off staff means you will be less capable of serving your members’ needs. That can only lead to a drop in engagement and retention. Instead of decreasing marketing funds, you should increase them. Even if you see a lull in membership during the recession itself, you’ll be that much farther ahead when it’s over if you invest in marketing now. More people will know about you vs. competitors, and they’ll come to you first when they have money to spend.
MYTH 5: You should wait to see how bad things get.
REALITY: Don’t wait for disaster to strike before you take deliberate steps to strengthen your association. People don’t make the best choices amid chaos. Reactive mode is never as effective as being proactive. Right now is a great time to examine your value proposition, strategy, and prospecting efforts to make sure they all serve the needs of your current and future members.
The best way to survive a recession is to strengthen and improve your association before one hits. Know and articulate your solid value proposition, invest in marketing and prospecting—especially to find the next generation of leaders, and focus your efforts on resources that deliver real, tangible value. These are best practices for success regardless of current events.
What Does the Coronavirus Have to Do with Association Marketing? Answer: It’s always a good idea to prepare for the worst.
Today’s major crisis is the coronavirus. Companies around the world are implementing travel restrictions. Events are being cancelled. Chaos and fear are driving decision-making. Maybe the next cause for panic will be an economic downturn. Or perhaps something else will impact your membership, events, and revenue. Maybe it’s the cultural and generational shift happening among your members and prospects.
Whether it’s a global pandemic or something else keeping people away from your association and events, now is the time to be proactive. You must adapt and act to ensure your organization can thrive no matter what the future brings. Here are four steps to help you prepare for the worst:
1. Fix your value proposition
If you can’t prove your value, people will find it easy to cut your membership and events in uncertain times. They need to understand what they’re paying for and why they should care—regardless of what’s happening in the world. A solid value proposition must be based on your association’s cause, not on “stuff” like products or programs. Use our Value Proposition Checklist below to help you articulate your real, tangible value.
2. Amend your strategy
Crisis or no crisis, your audience is constantly bombarded with marketing and media noise. It’s totally unrealistic to assume people will find your association on their own. Even if you manage to get their attention, younger members and prospects generally mistrust companies and traditional advertising. They need time to do research and ask for advice before making a purchase. Your strategy has to include modern digital marketing based on delivering value, nurturing prospects through the customer journey, and building trust over time.
3. Ramp up your prospecting
Fight uncertainty with sheer numbers. When a crisis blows over, the associations who already invested in marketing and prospecting will come out ahead. When people aren’t scared anymore and they have more money to spend on travel and professional development, they’ll be back in force. And they’ll knock on your door instead of a competitor’s if you invest in prospecting now. Plus, with so many in-person events being cancelled, now is an especially good time to find and engage people digitally.
4. Be the solution to the crisis
In the case of the coronavirus, your members are probably suffering too. Travel restrictions and uncertainty affect their businesses as well. How can your association help? What resources can you provide to ensure they weather the storm? If in-person events are no longer feasible, consider hosting virtual events. If any sort of event isn’t serving your membership, find out what is. Be a resource to your members during difficult times so they’ll trust you to serve their best interests all the time.
Don’t hunker down
You might think it’s a good idea to hunker down in the face of uncertainty, to cut spending to the bare essentials. In fact, the opposite is true. Taking action now can assure your success for years to come. Fail to act, and you’ll face even more uncertainty ahead.
Complete the Value Proposition Checklist
Would you like your association to be resilient in the face of whatever the future brings? The first step is to articulate a solid value proposition based on your cause. Complete this Value Proposition Checklist to help you think through this process.
What is your cause, the reason your association exists?
Whom do you serve?
What is your audience trying to achieve in their careers and businesses?
What are their pain points, obstacles, or challenges?
How do you help them overcome obstacles or achieve their goals?
What are people paying for when they join your association?
If your association didn’t have a face-to-face event, what’s the most valuable thing you offer? (Hint: It’s not content or thought leadership.)
What does your association offer that can’t be found on Google?
This is the final installment in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. Once you have a cause, a plan, assets, prospects, and engagement, you’re ready for Part 6: Grit.
Why your Association Needs More Grit (And How to Get it)
It turns out, the one thing that separates truly successful people from the rest of the pack isn’t money or intelligence or access to resources. It’s grit, says theHarvard Business Review. A culture of grit at your association could be the difference-maker that helps you reach your goals for membership, engagement and non-dues revenue.
What is grit?
Grit is passion to throw yourself behind a cause you believe in and the perseverance to see it through no matter the obstacles. Employees with grit roll up their sleeves, put in extra hours, and refuse to give up even when things get hard. They tirelessly pursue new ideas and explore possibilities that will improve your association and make your members’ lives better.
Why does your association need grit?
Your budget, time, and resources are limited, but grit is not. A gritty association can accomplish more than a lackluster or disinterested one regardless of available resources. Grit helps you get more out of what you’re already doing—your cause, marketing efforts, prospecting, and engagement. It makes your association more effective at fulfilling your mission, more appealing to members, and more sustainable in the long run.
Need more grit?
You can create a culture of grit to become a more successful organization by fueling passion and perseverance within your team. If your association already shows a good amount of grit, you can build on that to generate even greater outcomes.
To fuel passion, take a step back and reconnect with the “why” behind your organization. What is your purpose for existing? Why was your association created? Make sure your team understands the greater purpose behind what you’re doing. Next, check in with individuals to determine if they have what they need to be successful. Empowered employees who feel valued are more likely to show grit, voice their ideas, and go the extra mile.
When it comes to improving perseverance, simply stay the course. Don’t give up when a few marketing campaigns perform poorly. Learn from the past and make adjustments to improve in the future. It could take months or even years to get real results. While that might sound daunting, consider the lifetime value of an engaged member. How much will they pay in dues over 10 or 20 years? How many events will they attend? How many other members might they recruit? Be in for the long haul and reap the rewards.
CASE STUDY: Association of Corporate Council
Our client the Association of Corporate Counsel wanted to increase membership around the globe. However, their prospect list was out of date and not converting well. To increase the prospect pool, we used ACC’s existing brand resources—reports, surveys, and infographics—along with lead generation forms on social media. At first, the results were not especially impressive. However, we made some changes based on performance analytics, and we stuck to the plan. It paid off. Over 18 months, we generated 2,000 prospects and 1,100 new members.
Got grit?
When your association shows internal grit, your members will take notice. Because of your passion and perseverance, they’ll be inspired to go beyond as well—to attend your events, renew their dues, purchase additional products, and do whatever they can to support your cause.
Take the assessment to find out how much grit you have. Your results will determine how much passion and perseverance you might need to ignite within your association to achieve long-term success and sustainability.
This is the fifth post in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. To get started, establish your cause, sketch out a marketing plan, find or create marketing assets, and build a list of high-quality prospects. Then you’re ready for Part 5: Engagement.
How to Drive Engagement with your Events and Programs
So your marketing efforts paid off and you have a list of high-quality prospects. Now what? How can you turn all that potential into actual outcomes for your association? You need to take deliberate steps to fuel engagement.
What is engagement and why do you need it?
Engagement is an emotional state that leads to a physical action. It’s when people care about your association so much that they feel compelled to attend your events and participate in your programs. But engagement is easier said than done. It’s a noisy world out there and people are busy and distracted. Your association must be so compelling and so valuable that people seek out your resources regardless of whatever else they’re dealing with.
As with prospecting, engagement doesn’t happen overnight. You must first build trust by nurturing your prospects over time with value-added content that solves their problems. An effective workflow might include a digital ad that leads to a landing page where visitors can download a piece of content. Once you capture an email address, you can follow up with an email drip campaign.
Giving away useful content is a powerful way to establish trust with your prospects. To drive event attendance, consider using one of these proven formats:
Behind-the-scenes video of your event setup
An interview with a past attendee
Case stories that show the ROI of your event
Photo collage of last year’s conference
FAQ sheet to address common inquiries
Article published by one of your speakers
Event ROI toolkit
Capture leads with gated content
Eventually you will need to capture an email address so you can follow up with a nurturing email drip campaign. Here too, you should lead with helpful content, not your event or programs. For example, you can offer a tip sheet with key takeaways from your event. At the end of the tip sheet, you can include a call to action. For example: Interested in gaining more insights like these? Attend our annual conference.
Don’t be a time suck
There is a perception across industries that trade associations take up too much time. People believe they must read lengthy content, volunteer for committees, travel, and invest time and money to get the most value from membership. And busy professionals, especially senior executives, just don’t have time for all that.
Because of this perceived burden, many will not even consider engaging with your organization. To combat this, you need to show that your association isn’t a time suck. In fact, you must prove that you can save people time through your resources, connections, events, and other opportunities.
Keep it short and sweet
The first step in saving people time is to keep your communications brief. Here are a few strategies to get you started:
Craft emails with two or three yes-or-no questions and a clear call to action button.
Create infographics with few words and lots of visuals.
Summarize report findings with concise bullet points.
Write whitepapers and articles with clear subheadings to help readers skim for key details.
Consider checklists and tip sheets instead of lengthier content.
Keep videos to 30 seconds or less.
Case Study: Plant tour promotion
Our client, the Manufacturing Leadership Council, offers exclusive plant tours as a member benefit. When traditional emails to promote the tours didn’t perform as well as expected, we switched our strategy. Instead of making a hard sell to sign up for a tour, we offered a useful download on how to improve company culture, which was one of the themes of an upcoming tour. The idea was that once the user downloaded the content, they would see firsthand the value of a plant tour and be inspired to sign up. As a result, the Council’s plant tour emails had the highest open and clickthrough rates of any campaign sent to members this year.
Ready to turn your prospect list into engaged event attendees and program participants? Download this free engagement workflow to get started. It will show you how to get attention, nurture your prospects, and generate actions using digital ads, landing pages, content, and emails.
This is the fourth post in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. Before launching your prospecting campaigns, first establish your cause, sketch out a marketing plan, and find or create marketing assets. Then you’re ready for Part 4: Prospecting.
8 Best Practices to Find More Association Members
It’s time to find your people and move them to act.
Prospecting is the process of building an audience and nurturing them toward taking an action, such as attending your events, joining your association, or purchasing products. While it takes time to raise awareness and build trust with your base, good prospecting pays off. Follow these eight best practices to get a list of high-quality leads who are ready and eager to engage with your organization.
1. Establish goals.
Before you begin prospecting, determine realistic goals based on your budget and available resources. Keep in mind that it takes time to build a high-quality prospect list—maybe years. Prospecting also requires follow-up, so consider your available personnel when setting goals.
2. Determine your most likely prospects.
Prospects can include known or unknown audience segments. Your known audience might be lapsed members, nonmember event attendees, or people who purchased your products. Chances are they’re already somewhat familiar with your organization, so these could be warm leads that are easier to convert.
Your unknown audience is totally new. You won’t know much about them, and you can’t assume they know about you. Digital marketing tools can help narrow audience criteria, for example by job title, SIC or NAICS code, company revenue, and/or specific zip codes. Targeting an unknown audience might take more time and effort, but it’s a great way to get fresh blood into your organization.
3. Stay focused.
You don’t need to run digital ads on five social media platforms at once. Greater reach isn’t necessarily better. Try to narrow your audience to begin with to make the most of available resources. Two or three audience segments can help you target your efforts, but more can become too complex to manage. Help your audience stay focused by promoting only one thing at a time.
4. Use a proven workflow.
Prospecting is rarely a one-and-done endeavor. Here’s an example of a proven workflow to reach people over time: First, launch a social ad with an offer, such as a free whitepaper. When users click to claim the offer, send them to a landing page (never your homepage or a generic webpage). On the landing page, you can give away the content for free or in exchange for an email address. Once you capture the email address, follow up with an email drip campaign to nurture your leads.
5. Match the marketing asset to the customer journey.
Assume that unknown users have never heard of your organization before. Articles, toolkits, and e-books are good choices for this group. For those further along on the customer journey, member stories, infographics on member benefits, or an ROI calculator will move them toward a decision.
6. Fish where the fish are.
Choose a platform based on where your audience is likely to spend time. For example, Facebook is the most popular social media platform overall in terms of sheer numbers. However, younger demographics tend to prefer Snapchat and Instagram. LinkedIn has comparatively fewer users but offers purely professional interactions that could be more likely to achieve your desired outcomes.
7. Deliver on your promises.
Make sure your sales team is aware of your prospecting efforts and prepared to follow up and field questions. If you promise a free trial, consultation, or other giveaway, give people what they asked for. If you’re seeing low engagement or a high number of unsubscribes, this could mean people aren’t getting the value they had hoped for.
8. Stay nimble.
Not every great marketing promotion yields great results. Track performance and be prepared to make changes based on your audience’s actual behaviors.
Don’t wait for membership to fall off before you start prospecting. Continuous prospecting can ensure the sustainability of your organization while fueling engagement and non-dues revenue. To get started, download the sample prospecting workflow below.
This is the third post in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. If you missed our earlier posts, you can read about your cause and your marketing plan to catch up.
How to Attract Prospects and Members with Marketing Assets
People are more likely to engage with your brand in exchange for something tangible and beneficial. That’s why a good content-based digital marketing plan requires supporting assets to maximize outcomes.
What is a marketing asset?
A marketing asset, often referred to generally as “content,” can be almost anything from your association that offers value to your audience. Traditional marketing assets include whitepapers, infographics, how-to guides, e-books, webinars, videos, checklists, podcasts, survey results, industry reports, and many more. Thanks to new technology, marketing assets also include interactive content, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, chatbots, apps, and others.
With so many types of marketing assets to choose from, how do you know which ones will work for your audience? The answer: the ones that give people what they need when they need it. Personalization is key to a successful content-based digital marketing campaign.
Here are a few considerations when determining your marketing assets:
Where are individuals in the customer journey? New prospects need different information than long-term members.
What’s going on in your industry? Tailor assets around current trends, technology, and industry events.
What are their goals? Offer tools that enable goals, help them develop professionally, or assist in planning for future growth and success.
What are their pain points? Provide information that will save them time and money, make their lives easier, or help them overcome obstacles.
How to personalize marketing assets
To effectively personalize your campaign, you may need to segment your list into two or three meaningful groups. For example, members, nonmembers, and sales reps. You can also use marketing automation to determine who gets what. For example, a workflow based on a series of if-then statements could trigger various marketing assets and follow-up communications depending on user behavior.
While personalization requires a little more work and forethought, the results are well worth your time. One research study from Experian showed that personalized email campaigns receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher clickthrough rates than generic emails. Personalized marketing improves customer experience, which ultimately drives membership, non-dues revenue, and member engagement.
When in doubt, go visual and be quick
While your audience will have its own preferences, the current trend in marketing assets is to lean heavily on visual components. Additionally, keep in mind that time is always a concern for your members. Resources that save people time and are quick to digest are the most likely to generate outcomes.
Gated or ungated?
Gated marketing assets are those you give away in exchange for an action, such as providing an email address or starting an account. Gated content is a great way to build your prospect list. However, people won’t hand over their email address to just anyone. First, they need to trust that you offer value and that you won’t just spam them with more time-consuming emails.
When you give away your marketing assets with no strings attached, that’s known as ungated content. Ungated marketing assets demonstrate to your audience that you’re here to help, that you offer credible resources, and that you’re worthy of their trust. A good strategy to is to give away ungated content initially and eventually gate content to capture contact info.
How to get started
To get started using marketing assets to attract prospects and members, take a look at your existing materials. You might already have a stash of articles, interviews, infographics, podcasts, and more that can be used as-is or repurposed to support your cause and your marketing plan. If you need to create new materials, be sure they’re aligned with your existing brand’s look and feel for consistency.
Need more ideas for marketing assets? Download the checklist for 50+ ideas.
This is the second post in our series 6 Ways to Help Your Association Thrive. We’re covering six key marketing elements to help you reach your goals. If you missed our last edition, check out Part 1: The Cause.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan
Save time and money while boosting your marketing results with a quick and painless plan
So you know your cause, and you want to tell the world about it. You’ve got resources to share plus events to promote and products to sell. It’s tempting to blast your members and prospects with all these valuable things at once. But hold on a second…
Why you need a marketing plan
Getting attention and moving people to act involves a balance of timing, frequency, relevancy, and format. You need to meet your audience where they are or they won’t engage. Even a simple marketing plan can help you achieve better results while saving you time, money, and effort. Before you launch another promotion, stop and sketch out a plan.
Why your plan needs digital
You can’t improve results if you keep doing the same old thing. Now is a great time to embrace digital tools. Digital advertising and email automation enable precise audience targeting and follow-up based on actual user behaviors. With digital, you can customize each user’s experience with your brand to improve outcomes.
How to create a digital marketing plan
Planning a year of marketing might seem daunting, but it takes just seven steps.
1. Establish goals.
Set specific goals. If you want more members or event attendees, how many? What is your non-dues revenue target? Other goals might include web visitors or social media followers, email performance metrics, or improved member satisfaction. As much as possible, express your goals in hard numbers and concrete terms.
2. Get to know your audience better.
Dig deeper into your audience to improve your marketing like never before.
Consider three categories of data:
Demographics: age, gender, household income/company revenues, geography, years in business or profession, political affiliation, hobbies or special interests, etc.
History with your association: past purchase history, events attended, years as a member, volunteer positions, etc.
Data gleaned from online behaviors: web pages visited, articles or e-books downloaded, email opens, clicks etc.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a ton of data. With digital marketing, you will gain data as your campaigns progress. You can use what you learn to solidify and improve your efforts going forward.
3. Focus on value.
Go beyond networking, education, and certifications to focus on value. How will your association make people’s lives easier, save them money, or advance their careers? Brainstorm tangible benefits of your membership, events, products, and certifications. Calculate ROI whenever possible to prove you’re worth people’s time, money, and effort to engage.
4. Choose an engaging format.
Choose a format, platform, or channel based on your audience, goals, and budget. Some of the most effective strategies are email drip and nurture campaigns, social ads paired with helpful content (ex: whitepapers, e-books), and web retargeting. But you’ll need to test and track to see what works for your audience.
5. Create a marketing calendar.
Timing matters. Consider what else might be going on in your audience’s lives: holidays, industry events, competitor messages, other comms from your organization, etc. Schedule your promotions when they will have the least competition from other sources. Then make sure your team is aware of launches and prepared to field responses.
6. Execute.
Don’t fall victim to analysis paralysis. At some point you have to put your best foot forward and launch your initiatives into the world.
7. Track performance.
You must track performance and analyze results to know if your plan is working. From there, you can make adjustments on the fly or learn from past efforts to improve in the future.
Your cause is the driving force behind your organization, but without a plan you can’t reach your full potential. Adding digital marketing to your plan can further improve your results while saving you time and money. Ready to get started on your marketing plan? Download the free Sample Marketing Plan below to guide your efforts.
So you need more members. And more non-dues revenues. And you’d like to boost engagement while you’re at it. To reach your goals and truly thrive, you’ll need more than a nice website or a great social campaign. You’ll need six key elements working in harmony: a cause, a plan, marketing assets, prospects, engagement, and non-dues revenues. In this six-part series, we’ll cover all these essential elements so you can get maximum results for your association. Part 1: The Cause.
How a Cause Helps your Association Thrive
Get attention in a world of endless spam, robocalls, and popup ads
Do you ever wish you received more email spam, robocalls, or popup ads? Of course not. And your members don’t either. We all get too many emails and phone calls. We’re sick of slick sales pitches and impersonal advertising. By now your audience is hardwired to ignore most marketing messages—even the ones that could benefit them.
Considering all this, how can you get attention and compel people to join, attend, renew, and engage?
You need a cause. Give people a reason to care. Help them feel like they’re making a difference. If you can engage people emotionally in your cause, there’s almost nothing they won’t do to support it. If they feel needed and valued within your community, they will stick around year after year to work for your cause and sustain your organization. They will look forward to your communications and tell others about your important work.
Before you even consider your next marketing message, campaign, or platform, you need to determine your cause.
What a cause is and isn’t
Your cause must be a simple, powerful idea your audience can relate to and rally around. It’s more than a marketing theme, campaign, or tagline. It’s more precise and tangible than your mission or vision statement.
A cause is not simply donating a portion of your proceeds to charity or organizing a food drive. These might be worthy undertakings that contribute to your cause, but they’re details and they’re short lived. A cause is a big-picture, long-term value proposition that explains why you do what you do, what drives your organization, and what you’re passionately willing to work hard and even fight for.
Examples of great causes
REI: Get more people outside.
ServiceMaster: Because your customers and employees deserve a clean, safe and healthy environment.
American Heart Association: Save and improve lives by fighting heart disease and stroke.
Apple: Enhance lives through innovative technology.
National Alliance on Mental Illness: Build better lives for Americans affected by mental illness.
National Association of Manufacturers: Support the more than 12.8 million men and women who make things in America.
How to determine your association’s cause
Determining your association’s cause boils down to just two considerations: who you help and how you help them. Explore specifically who your audience is—job titles, location, age, gender, years in the profession, company size, etc. Then think about their biggest pain points and ultimate goals. Brainstorm how you solve these pain points and how you enable those goals. What is the most powerful resource you can offer people? How do you make a difference in their lives? Don’t get too wrapped up in minutiae. Think about the big picture, the 10,000-foot view of your industry.
For help on this process, download our free guide: How to Determine Your Association’s Cause. By answering just five questions you’ll pin down your purpose and articulate your cause.
The other day at the grocery store, I walked down the cookie aisle looking for a snack. Thinking of maintaining my healthy diet, I left without purchasing anything. Then I got to the exit, where a group of adorable young ladies were selling Girl Scout Cookies. I bought five boxes to support their troop. That’s the power of a cause. It transcends logic and taps into emotions to compel people to act. Only when you know your cause can you craft an effective plan for the rest of your marketing. More on that next time.
Need help determining your association’s cause so you can get attention and rally people to action? Download this guide and answer just five questions to get started.
I recently attended a fantastic retirement party for my old friend Ben. Every detail was perfect—the beautiful venue, gourmet food, live entertainment, and fun atmosphere. We almost didn’t notice the staff running around behind the scenes to make sure everything went off without a hitch. At the end of the evening, each guest received a special gift basket. We left feeling happy for Ben and lucky to know him.
Omnichannel marketing makes your audience feel like honored guests at a great party. When every interaction they have with your brand is positive and seamless, they’re more likely to join, attend, and engage.
Here are seven steps to help you execute omnichannel marketing that makes people feel great about your organization.
Get your entire team on board
You can’t have a seamless customer experience unless your company is unified internally. Make sure everyone knows your mission, vision, and purpose in addition to your current promotional offers and communications calendar. If a prospect calls to take advantage of an offer, your sales team should be prepared to deliver.
Know your audience
Take time to dig deep into what your members and prospects really want. What are their pain points? What can you offer that will help them save time and money, advance in their careers, or further their mission? If you’re not sure, conduct surveys, focus groups, or interviews to gain insights. Analyze data from past campaigns or consider having a data service enhance your list to go deeper.
Segment your list
It’s impossible to serve your entire base with the same approach. Segment your list by meaningful characteristics so you can tailor your messages and offers. Which segments you choose will depend on your organization and your audience. Company type or size, job title, geographic location, and member/nonmember are just a few possibilities.
Integrate channels and the customer journey
Consider all the potential ways your base might interact with your brand—in-person events, products, webinars, sales calls, direct mail, social media, and more. Then align your efforts to the customer journey. For example, prospects who aren’t familiar with your organization might need more industry reports, whitepapers, or webinars to believe in your credibility. Warm leads might benefit from a phone call or meet-and-greet event.
Put the customer first
To truly serve your base, you must put their needs and interests before your own. Give away information at first to build trust. Offer a free trial to prove you stand behind your products. These activities won’t instantly generate revenues, but they will build trust. And people need to trust you before they’re willing to join your organization, purchase your products, and tell others about your important work.
Use compelling formats and design
What you say matters, and how you say it is just as important. Choose formats and designs that grab attention and invite people to engage with your brand. Use clean fonts that clearly communicate. Choose bright, modern photographs and images with people. Select online platforms with built-in tools, such as lead gen forms, that make it easy for people to engage and raise their hands. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent and unified with your core brand.
Case Study: Omnichannel product launch
The National Association of Manufacturers asked us to raise awareness and drive engagement with a new suite of products. To help us determine the best channels, resources, and messaging for the campaign, we created six personas. Each persona provided details on personality traits, career aspirations, use of technology, and pain points for a key audience segment.
Guided by the personas, we developed an omnichannel strategy that included fresh graphic design, paid ads on Facebook and LinkedIn, automated email drip campaigns, and infographics and videos. We analyzed results as the campaign progressed and tailored our efforts based on user behaviors. As a result, leads for one product increased by 600% and traffic to the product’s webpage doubled.
Make good on your promises
High-caliber marketing and polished sales pitches amount to nothing if your members are ultimately unsatisfied. Omnichannel marketing means you follow through on your promises and then go above expectations. Provide connections, products, and events that your members actually want. Prove ROI whenever possible. Take every opportunity to make members and prospects feel like honored guests at a fantastic party.
My car died last month. I went online to see what my local dealer had available. I filled out a form with my desired make, model, and year along with my contact info. For several weeks I received social media ads for available vehicles that met my criteria. The dealership mailed me a Car Buyers Tip Sheet to help me make a decision. One day, I got a phone call inviting me into the dealership. When I went, they had three cars that met my specs ready for me to test drive. The salesperson was friendly and knowledgeable but not pushy. They offered competitive financing options, so I drove my new car off the lot the same day.
My car-buying experience is a great example of omnichannel marketing. The dealership made it easy for me to see my options, educate myself, and connect with an expert. They had resources for me at every step of my decision-making process. The result is that I’m satisfied with my purchase. I would buy from the same dealer again, and I would recommend them to friends.
What is omnichannel marketing?
While “omnichannel” might sound like just another bit of marketing jargon, it’s actually a very simple concept: seamless customer experience. “Omni” means all. Omnichannel means you look at all the possible ways your audience interacts with your brand and you make sure everything works well together. It goes beyond your marketing department to include your sales team, customer service, and in-person events. The result of well-executed omnichannel marketing is long-term member loyalty and increased engagement with your association.
How is omnichannel different from multichannel marketing?
“Channel” is just another word for format or platform. Are you reaching people via email, social media, direct mail, or cold calling? These are potential channels for your marketing efforts. “Multichannel” means you’re using multiple formats and platforms to connect with your audience. Most associations today use multichannel marketing. What’s often missing, however, is a holistic approach that considers all the touchpoints along the entire customer journey—from awareness to consideration to decision and, eventually, long-term loyalty and deep engagement. That’s where omnichannel marketing comes in.
Two keys to omnichannel marketing
1. Give the people what they want.
The idea of a traditional sales funnel doesn’t quite apply to omnichannel marketing. “A” does not necessarily lead directly to “B” and then “C.” Omnichannel marketing recognizes that some people move from awareness to decision quickly because of an urgent need. Others might need extra information and support during a long consideration phase. Some people might visit the same channel more than once or skip others entirely. Omnichannel meets people where they are and helps them in whatever way they need.
2. Be consistent in everything you do.
To ensure a seamless experience along this winding omnichannel journey, you will need to ensure brand consistency at every turn. Your collateral should maintain visual continuity in your logo, colors, fonts, look, and feel. Your voice should be clear and consistent, whether in social media, email, or direct mail. Your sales team should be knowledgeable about your association, products, and current promotions. Additionally, your in-person events should include everything your marketing promises.
Case Study: American Specialty Toy Retailing Association
To help the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association promote their annual conference and tradeshow, we used a variety of formats, including direct mail, social media, digital ads, and email. To maximize these channels, we segmented ASTRA’s list into meaningful categories—nonmembers, sales reps, and store owners. Next we considered available brand assets and crafted additional infographics and videos to fill in the gaps. From there, we developed digital workflows based on segments, the assets, and ASTRA’s goals. Users determined next steps based on the actions they took.
Our efforts nearly doubled the number of first-time conference attendees. The last piece of the omnichannel puzzle was that ASTRA’s event delivered on all the promises we made in the marketing materials, which is sure to fuel repeat attendance next year.
Why do you need omnichannel marketing?
It’s all too easy to turn people off. If my car dealer called me in but didn’t have any cars in stock that met my specs, I might never have returned. If the salesperson was slick and impersonal, I might not have made a purchase. Even if I had an okay experience, I might not recommend the dealership to others or become a repeat customer. Omnichannel marketing is a way to continually engage and satisfy your base even if they’re not quite ready to join, attend, or make a purchase. It takes time, but the results are quality prospects and satisfied members with a high lifetime value.
I’m terrible at golf. A few years back, I bought a set of really nice golf clubs. They’re top of the line, with high-quality craftsmanship and the best materials. I was totally convinced they would enhance my performance. I’m still terrible at golf. Without knowing the proper techniques or how to fine tune my swing, I can’t get the most out of my clubs.
When it comes to digital marketing, you can pay a lot of money for platforms and tools in the hope that you’ll automatically see improved performance on your campaigns and increased engagement among your base. The trouble is, digital marketing is a little bit like my golf game. Having the right tools is a good start. But using proven best practices and fine-tuning your efforts are the only ways to achieve your full potential.
Follow these best practices to execute an effective digital marketing workflow that generates results and strengthens engagement.
What is a workflow?
A workflow is a defined communication strategy based on your goals, your audience’s needs, and the resources you have available for marketing. It’s an automated process defined by if/then statements. Workflows are effective at building engagement because they help you deliver timely, relevant messaging and useful information to build trust with your audience over time. They can include any combination of tools—email automation, digital ads, lead generation forms, landing pages, content, and more.
Best practices for digital ads
Before you ever craft a digital ad, you’ll first need to establish your campaign goals. Do you want to increase event attendance? Find program participants? Boost web traffic or social media interactions? From there, you’ll need to look at your audience. What are their pain points and how will your programs or events solve them? No matter which platform you use—Facebook, LinkedIn, web retargeting, etc.—a good digital ad has an engaging headline and an eye-catching image. Its look and feel match the rest of your branding. It contains a clear, relevant offer and a simple call to action.
Some platforms offer ads with lead generation forms. These are automatically populated with a user’s name and email address. All the user needs to do is click “Submit” to receive your offer and opt-in to your list. To get the most out of your lead gen forms, keep them short and to the point. Don’t use too many form fields—first and last name, email address, and one additional qualifier are enough.
For either type of digital ad, you should determine what a good cost per lead is before you launch. That way, you can gauge performance and make adjustments along the way.
Best practices for landing pages
The number one best practice for landing pages is to use them. Never send traffic from your digital ads to your homepage. Make sure your landing page relates directly to what your ad is promoting. Use the same headline as your ad if possible, to avoid any confusion. The landing page’s look and feel should also match your ad and the rest of your branding. Keep the messaging short and simple, using bullet points to simplify your copy. Include a real testimonial to add authenticity to your offer. Don’t forget a clear call to action so people know what to do.
Best practices for email drip campaigns
Similar to digital ads, you should establish your campaign goals before you begin to craft an email. Keep your message short and simple here as well, and stick to one main idea to avoid confusing your audience. Engagement campaigns should focus on how your audience will benefit from interacting with your organization. Personalize the message using any available data, such as purchase history or past behaviors. Don’t forget to make an offer and include a clear call to action. Take time to craft a specific subject line that piques curiosity, promises a benefit, or excites your audience. Consider A/B testing your subject lines to see what resonates best.
Best practices for digital marketing overall
Be eye catching.
Keep your message clear and simple.
Personalize and humanize your message.
Include an offer and call to action.
Align look and feel with the rest of your branding.
Track performance and make changes if needed.
Case Study: Ending the Silence
The National Alliance on Mental Illness works to end the stigma surrounding mental health conditions. As part of this mission, NAMI created Ending the Silence, a program in which young people share their mental health stories with other youth. NAMI asked us to help find a steady supply of presenters for the program. We created a workflow that included a combination of digital ads, landing pages, and emails to tell human-focused stories and inspire young people to sign up to participate. Our efforts generated 500 leads, exceeding NAMI’s goal of 150.
Free Engagement Workflow
Throwing lots of money at your digital marketing might get you broader reach or access to more tools. But if you don’t follow proven best practices, chances are you’re missing out on leads and conversions. While you’re fine-tuning your digital marketing golf swing, download this free Engagement Workflow Template to get started on the path to better engagement and better ROI.
Angelo is a bus driver for a small tour company in Ecuador. Quite often the tourists’ breakfast comes with a side of papaya. Many of the tourists don’t like papaya, so they give it to Angelo, who says “thank you” and eats it. This goes on for years. More tourists, more papaya for Angelo. One day, someone says: “Wow, Angelo, you must really like papaya!” He finally confesses that he hates papaya. He only eats it to be polite to all the tourists who give him their fruit.
Your marketing content is a little bit like papaya. Too often there’s a disconnect between what your association provides and the resources your audience members actually want. If your content marketing isn’t performing the way you’d like, you may need to fix one or more of these common problems.
1. You don’t have a strategy.
If you’re pumping out lots of content without a plan, chances are some of your efforts are going to waste. Take time to craft a strategy based on your goals, resources, and budget in addition to your audience’s needs and wants.
2. Your content isn’t relevant.
No one wants their time wasted. Make sure you’re giving your audience content they can actually put to use. Segmenting your list into two or three groups and tailoring content accordingly can help you increase relevancy and results.
3. You need to adjust your frequency.
You can’t just bombard people. Chances are your members and prospects get too many emails and too many digital ads. Look at your association’s communications calendar, and schedule your promotions when they have the least competition from other messages.
4. People don’t trust you.
You have to earn people’s attention and trust. Consider giving away content with no strings attached initially. Eventually you can ask for an email address for follow-up communications. If your ad or landing page promises a solution, your content better deliver.
5. You don’t have a cause.
People need to know why they should care about your content, your mission, your organization, and your offerings. They need a cause to rally around. Ask yourself why your organization exists. Then make sure it’s clearly communicated in your marketing messages.
6. You forgot to include emotions.
Even if your members are technical experts or high-level professionals, they still need to be emotionally compelled to take action. Ensure your content contains a balance of logic, credibility, and—above all—emotion.
7. You need to adjust your format.
Don’t forget there are dozens of potential formats for content—from podcasts to infographic, reports, quizzes, checklists, and memes. Track engagement with your campaigns to learn which formats resonate best. Experiment with long vs. short formats, visual vs. text, etc.
8. Your audience is confused.
If people are opening your emails or clicking on your ads but not converting, it could be a sign that they’re getting lost along the way. Make it easy for them to claim your content by including clear call to action buttons or using prepopulated lead gen forms on your digital ads.
9. Your voice is impersonal.
People connect with other people better than with organizations. Communicate in a human, conversational tone to get the most out of your content marketing.
Case Study:
The National Association of Manufacturers asked us to help promote their Manufacturers Marketplace product. The challenge was that their target audience already received too many emails each day. We created a content strategy that included videos, infographics, and e-books. To personalize the content and increase relevancy, we created personas for key audience segments. Landing pages and prepopulated lead gen forms made it easy for people to take action. Our efforts increased leads for Manufacturers Marketplace by 600% and doubled the amount of traffic to the product’s web page.
Before you feed your audience more papaya, take some time to tune up your content marketing. Fixing even one or two of these common problems can dramatically improve your results.
I recently made the mistake of feeding a stray cat at the office. Now it comes back every day expecting more food. Yesterday, there were two cats outside my door. I may have created a monster…
Finding enough content for your marketing might feel like feeding hungry cats. Once you set things in motion, you need a steady stream of content to keep everyone satisfied. How can you possibly keep up? Here are 5 ideas to help you find, repurpose, or create content to feed your need.
1. Develop a strategy.
To accurately assess your content needs, you’ll first need a strategy. Who is your audience? What are their pain points? How can you help them? How often do they need to hear from you? Also consider your organization’s goals. Are you promoting a product or event? Do you need more members? What resources and budget can you dedicate to content marketing? The answers to all these questions will determine how much content you need and what types of content will yield the best results.
2. Mine your existing materials.
The easiest type of content to use is content that already exists. Take a look at your stash of marketing collateral, industry reports, whitepapers, images, infographics, audio or video recordings, and more to see what you might be able to use as-is. Keep in mind, however, that just because it exists doesn’t mean it’s relevant to your target audience. Only choose pieces that are actually useful to your base.
3. Repurpose existing content.
Repurposing content can save you time and effort compared to creating new pieces. Be creative. An infographic can become a video. An interview with an expert can become a podcast. An industry event can become a best practices checklist. We once created a series of short videos for a client using interesting facts from their annual report. Each video contained just one fact that we animated to add interest.
4. Beg or borrow content.
Look to partner organizations as potential sources of content. Their industry reports, infographics, PowerPoint presentations, webinars, or other current information might be relevant to your audience. And don’t be afraid to ask your contacts to be guest contributors to your blog or other publications.
5. Create fresh content.
If you want to maintain your place as an industry influencer, you will need to produce fresh original content at some point. You will likely need a combination of formats to maintain audience interest. Ideas for fresh content: Interview highly engaged members to discuss benefits of your association. Collect testimonials for use on social media posts or videos. Write how-to articles about your products. The possibilities are endless.
Here are just a few additional ideas:
Case study
E-book
Cartoon or illustration
FAQ sheet
Webinar
List
Quiz
Original research
Summary of original research
Annual report
Whitepaper
Survey
Timeline
Podcast
Email newsletter
Product review
Chart or graph
“Day in the Life” article
Resources list
Photo collage
Opinion piece
Template
Case study:
To help the National Association of Manufacturers promote their product NAM Energy, we developed a content marketing strategy that included a combination of new and existing materials. The NAM already had an energy-related fact sheet we were able to use by adding the NAM Energy branding elements to the document. We also developed an original infographic and three curated member stories that were featured on individual microsites. The result was a 1688% increase in total revenue for the product.
Content marketing works because it builds trust with your audience by offering something they need. It helps you fulfill an unspoken promise that your association is worth their time. With that relationship solidly in place, your audience is much more receptive to your hard sales pitches for products, events, and membership renewals. Find a way to feed the cats in your neighborhood and your association will see serious ROI from your efforts.
When my daughter was in fifth grade, she made a model solar system for the science fair. So did 15 other kids. Many of the entries looked sloppy or hastily put together. Some of the kids couldn’t explain their models very well. My daughter took home the blue ribbon. Her project stood out from the others because it was more detailed, had vibrant colors, and included an in-depth report.
Content marketing is a little bit like bringing a solar system to the science fair. Everyone is doing it. Not everyone is doing it well. Follow these 10 best practices to ensure your content marketing stands out from the crowd and actually converts.
1. Expand your definition of “content”
Go beyond whitepapers and blogs. Content can include podcasts, video, artificial intelligence, FAQs, memes, quizzes, photos, infographics, and more in addition to traditional formats like whitepapers, blogs, and reports. Anything that offers useful information to help your audience can be used in content marketing.
2. Choose the right format
Let your audience determine your format. If podcasts are your most popular offering, for example, do more podcasts. If your audience prefers substantive whitepapers and reports, focus your efforts there. If you don’t have much data on audience preferences, a good bet is to keep it brief. Start with short videos (less than a minute), infographics, checklists, Q&As, or memes.
3. Focus on the customer
Know your audience. What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are their goals and aspirations? You can’t provide useful information if you don’t know what people want. Consider segmenting your list so you can tailor content to audience needs.
4. Offer something valuable
Once you’ve thoroughly considered #3 above, mine your existing brand assets for things people need. Do you have reports, articles, e-books, podcasts, whitepapers, or other helpful tools that will make people’s lives easier? Repurpose relevant materials, but generate original content if your existing stash doesn’t serve your base.
5. Use available data
Whenever possible, make decisions based on data. Look at past performance of emails, ads, and other promotions to see which topics and offers best resonate with your audience. Choose a marketing channel based on demographics or other insights you have about your prospects and members.
6. Schedule your content
Don’t just look at the content you’re launching. Look at what else your audience receives from your association. What other industry events are going on? Time your content when it will have the least amount of competition for attention.
7. Optimize for mobile
There’s a good chance most people read your communications on a mobile device. That means if your content is not mobile optimized, you are wasting your efforts.
8. Speak like a human
Avoid technical terms and industry jargon in favor of conversational, human speech. Your job is to get attention and engage people. You can always follow up later with more in-depth information.
9. Stay true to your brand
Your content marketing should be consistent, unified, and aligned with your existing brand. Consistency helps people recognize you and trust you, two key things that must happen before people will take action.
10. Include a call to action and make it easy to act
Clearly communicate what you want people to do—listen now, download this report, visit this site, etc. Make it easy for them to take action. Try prepopulated lead generation forms so all they have to do is click a button.
Case study:
We helped the Association of Corporate Council build a prospect pool and grow their membership with content marketing. To get attention and build trust, we used the ACC’s existing reports, surveys, and infographics combined with lead generation forms on Facebook and LinkedIn. As a result, we grew the prospect pool by 1400 new email addresses and gained over 600 new members new members.
There’s a lot of poorly executed content marketing out there. Unfortunately, it’s competing for your audience’s attention alongside your efforts. The good news is that it’s still possible to make content work for you—to get attention, nurture your leads into high-quality prospects, and convert them into members and loyal advocates. But if you want to take home the blue ribbon, you’ll have to be better than anyone else.
I was about to leave a dull party when I overheard the couple next to me talking about camping. “Where’s your favorite spot?” I couldn’t help asking. This sparked an hours-long conversation about parks, outdoor adventures, and the best gear. I ended up being one of the last people to leave the party, but not before I connected with my new friends on Facebook.
Conversation is a powerful way to engage people and build relationships, whether you’re at a dinner party or a sales meeting. But conversation alone is not especially beneficial to your association unless it results in action. You need to move from conversation to conversion.
Here are six strategies to help you converse and convert to attract prospects, acquire and retain members, and drive non-dues revenues.
1. Consider how people prefer to communicate.
Your audience spends a lot of time browsing social media and sending text messages. They’re chatting, snapping photos, and sharing links. Take your cues from your audience: Join them where they already spend time, and speak in human, personable language they understand. Use compelling visuals to complement your conversations.
2. Be brief.
Along the lines of #1 above, keep your messages short and sweet. If you can’t hook people quickly with something compelling, they won’t stick around to read any length of content. Be brief, especially when prospecting. Your job is to generate interest and get people to raise their hands. You’ll have plenty of time to provide more information once you’ve successfully snagged a new member or prospect.
3. Ask yes/no questions.
Do you need to grow your prospect list? Would you like to increase member acquisition this year? These are pointed yes/no questions that pique interest and spark conversation. Lead off your website content, sales letters, and social media posts with yes/no questions to generate dialogue. It will cause people to linger longer on your website, at your events, or on your social media feeds.
4. Encourage conversation among your internal team.
When your internal team is united and aligned with your mission, your members and prospects will have a better experience with your brand. Consider an in-house messaging platform to facilitate discussions and sharing among your team.
5. Go beyond content marketing.
Your content—such as whitepapers, webinars, articles, and e-books—is the professional face of your organization. But don’t forget the three-pronged approach to association marketing. You also need human and personal approaches to maximize your ROI. Stories, automated workflows, and quiz-style assessments can help humanize and personalize your marketing.
6. Ask people to join the movement.
Once you’ve engaged your audience in meaningful dialogue, encourage them to continue the conversation by joining your cause or movement. You can ask people to take a pledge, add their name to a list of supporters, or provide their email for further updates on progress toward your mission. Make people feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.
Conversation Case Study
We used this conversational approach to help the National Alliance for Mental Illness drive participation for their Ending the Silence program. In just 150 words each, we told stories of young people who went from struggling with mental illness to recovery and eventually becoming presenters who share their stories with others. We featured these brief, human-focused stories on social media to engage other young people in a dialog. We captured email addresses so we could follow up with additional communication that included yes/no questions, such as, “Ready to share your story of recovery?”
The age of information overload
On the surface, this conversational approach might seem too informal for a professional association. Your audience could include industry veterans or senior executives with advanced degrees. Don’t these people demand all the facts and figures before making a decision?
The truth is, people don’t need more information. Your members and prospects are already overwhelmed with ads, webinars, whitepapers, PowerPoints, and data of all forms. If they want more information, they can access it all at their fingertips, in seconds, without any help from you. What they really need is connection, a partner who can curate the most important information and offer specific resources based on their needs and wants.
And what’s the best way to know their needs and wants? You guessed it: meaningful conversation. But don’t stop there. Go for the conversion. Think about my dinner party, and don’t leave until you’ve established a way to stay in touch.
When I interviewed for my first job out of college, I had a strong resume and a few good references. But so did many other candidates. During the conversation, the interviewer and I discovered we were from the same small town. We spent the rest of the hour sharing stories about growing up there. The next day, he called to say I got the job.
I believe my success was due to three factors. I had a professional resume and a reference list of other humans willing to vouch for me. But what sealed the deal was my personal connection with the interviewer.
The same professional, human, and personal touches that got me my job can help your organization achieve your goals too. Apply this three-pronged approach to your marketing to get attention, engage your audience, and generate outcomes.
Prong 1: Professionalize
Professional marketing content includes whitepapers, surveys, reports, industry publications, and webinars. These pieces focus on facts and information. They contribute to your credibility while educating and assisting your target audience.
Professional content is a great tool for prospecting. For example, one of our clients, the Association of Corporate Council, has a collection of high-quality surveys and benchmarking reports. We use these pieces as lead magnets for ACC’s social media ad campaigns. Users can download the reports once they provide an email address. Our efforts so far have increased ACC’s prospect pool by 600 email addresses, gained 400 new members, and grown award nominations by 66%.
While this professional content has been an effective marketing tool for ACC, neuroscience tells us not to stop there. Aside from professional, logical information, people need an emotional reason to engage with your brand. For this, you’ll need stories.
Prong 2: Humanize
Stories humanize your brand by putting real names and faces to your association. They take your organization beyond facts and figures to show actual member benefits and ROI.
Our work with the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association is a great example of humanized marketing. To promote ASTRA’s annual conference, Marketplace & Academy, we crafted attendee stories and promoted them through digital marketing, email automation, landing pages, and other collateral materials. The result was a 23% boost in attendance each year for three years.
Professional, human marketing is effective. But if you want to go for the gold, you’ll need to personalize your efforts for each individual you’re trying to engage.
Prong 3: Personalize
Personalized marketing goes beyond “Dear <>” variable data and includes tailoring your messaging and offers based on what you know about your audience.
One way to achieve personalization is to create several defined communication strategies, called workflows, with if/then statements. Once you set workflows in motion, your audience behaviors trigger next steps. For example, if a user enters their email address to download your whitepaper, the action will trigger a series of follow-up emails with related content and offers.
In addition to the workflows we used to promote ASTRA’s Marketplace & Academy, we added further personalization by creating a quiz-style assessment called “What Kind of Specialty Toy Are You?” After each user answered a series of multiple-choice questions, they received a toy-themed personality profile based on their answers. The assessment encouraged interaction with ASTRA’s brand and reassured interested prospects that they had found a group of like-minded peers.
How to use all 3 prongs
Lots of associations offer plenty of professional, logical reasons why people should join their organization. Their communications are filled with facts and figures about member benefits. But if they don’t take steps to humanize and personalize their marketing, they could be missing out on new members, event attendees, and non-dues revenues. Much like my job prospects, you can’t reach your full potential without a human touch and a personal, emotionally engaging connection to your audience.
When I got my first manual camera, all my pictures came out blurry or dark. It took me a while to learn the balance between the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. These three elements come together in different ratios to create a nice picture. Now when I shoot, I change the ratios depending on how I want to portray my subject. Similarly, Aristotle tells us we need three components for a successful campaign: ethos, logos, and pathos. Much like in my photographs, you can use these three elements in different ratios to achieve a desired outcome.
When to use more ethos
Ethos speaks to the character and credibility of your message. Prospecting, for example, often requires a heavy dose of ethos to build trust with people who are unfamiliar with your organization. Prospects want to know how long you’ve been in business, how many members you have, and the breadth of your offerings.
When to use more logos
Logos includes facts and information to help your audience make a decision. Launching a new product or promoting a high-priced event often requires a lot of logos. For example, your event participants want to know ROI of attending vs the cost of registration and travel. People purchasing your products want to know features, costs, and benefits.
When to use more pathos
Pathos is the emotional appeal of your campaign. It gives people a reason to care. No matter what you’re promoting, your campaign must have pathos. An emotional appeal is an obvious choice for fundraising campaigns, but it’s also important for things like member acquisition. Consider that you’re giving people a place to belong, to collaborate, and to improve their businesses and their lives.
Case Study: National Alliance on Mental Illness
The National Alliance on Mental Illness asked us to help promote a new website for their Cure Stigma program. They wanted to raise awareness about their cause by generating 10,000 unique webpage views. We created Facebook ads using single images and PSA videos featuring NAMI ambassadors.
Ethos: NAMI is a nationally known organization with a long history and a good reputation. The NAMI name established the campaign’s ethos. We aligned the look and feel of the ads with the rest of the NAMI brand.
Logos: The PSA videos contained hard facts, such as that 1 in 5 people in the U.S. are affected by mental illness. The call to action was to take a quiz to determine whether users have stigma about mental illness.
Pathos: The images and videos provided a human touch to engage prospects emotionally. The dialogue was lighthearted and humorous.
This campaign is a great example of how to use a mix of ethos, logos, and pathos to raise awareness, engage prospects, and incite action. If even one element was missing, the campaign would not have been as successful. The result: We surpassed NAMI’s goal by attracting 13,600 unique webpage views in just one month.
Marketing Essentials Self-checklist
Use the checklist below to gauge whether your campaigns contain sufficient amounts of ethos, logos, and pathos to reach your audience and compel them to take action. You should be able to answer “yes” to at least one question in each section, more depending on your campaign and goals.
Ethos
Is the campaign’s look and feel aligned with the rest of your branding?
Is the information in your message reasonable, true, and accurate?
Does it contain verifiable information or testimonials?
Do you mention a keynote speaker or other expert affiliated with your organization?
If prospecting to an unknown audience, do you provide enough details to start building trust? (ex: years in business, number of members, breadth of your offerings)
Can you deliver on your promises?
Logos
Does your campaign include important dates, costs, facts, and figures?
Do you provide details on your event’s schedule or your product’s features?
Do you explain how to use your product or service?
Do you show return on investment for your events or products?
Is it clear how your audience can take action to claim your offer?
Pathos
Is your message written in an approachable, human tone with words a lay person would understand?
Does your message contain emotional words? (ex: vivid descriptions, sounds, or colors)
Does your message prove you understand and empathize with your audience pain points?
Does it include a story?
Does it excite your audience or tug at the heart strings?
Does it inspire possibilities?
Does it get people fired up so they want to take action?
Did you answer “yes” to at least one question in each section? If not, consider how you can fill in any gaps to build trust with your audience, appeal to their logical side, and engage them emotionally. You’ll need all three elements to create a compelling picture of your organization, product, or cause.
When my daughter was 10 years old, she came home from school one day with a sad, skinny puppy in her arms. All I could think of was how expensive, dirty, and difficult it would be to have a pet. Logically, adopting this stray made little sense. Plus, we’d never had a pet before. How could we possibly know how to care for it? But one look at my daughter’s face and I knew we would keep the dog.
The Art of Persuasion
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived more than 2000 years ago. Among the wealth of wisdom he gave to the world was the art of persuasion. He reasoned that every good argument includes three essential components: ethos, logos, and pathos—that is, credibility, logic, and emotion. These are often referred to as the Aristotelian appeals, and they still matter today.
When you launch a marketing campaign, you’re basically making an argument in favor of your organization, event, or product. If you present the right amounts of credibility, logic, and emotion, your audience will not be able to resist your offer.
What is ethos?
Ethos refers to the credibility and trustworthiness of your campaign. It goes beyond the message itself and includes the ethics and character of the sender as well as the “packaging” in which it’s delivered.
The sender
Your audience asks, perhaps subconsciously, if the message is coming from a reputable source, such as a well-known company or an influential individual. They might also care about the way you do business, for example with integrity, social responsibility, or eco-friendliness. Choosing a well-known keynote speaker for your annual conference is an example of the ethos of your event and your organization. Donating a portion of your profits to charity is another.
The message itself
Communicating accurate, verifiable information is a great start to building trust with your audience. Go one step further and deliver valuable, useful content that can make people’s lives easier. Testimonials, citations from experts, and helpful information all contribute to your message’s ethos.
The packaging
Have you ever bought a certain type of wine simply because it came in an attractive bottle? Similarly, your audience is influenced by the way your campaigns look and feel. They will notice if your images are professional, your content is error-free, your printing is high quality, and your branding is consistent across channels.
What is logos?
Logos refers to the logical aspects of a campaign. It includes facts, figures, information, and product features. If I’m shopping for a car, for example, the miles per gallon and the maintenance record can help me make a sound decision. If I’m considering joining an organization, I might want to know about continuing education credits and networking opportunities. Costs, terms and conditions, and how-to information are all examples of logical appeals.
What is pathos?
Pathos refers to the emotional appeal of your campaign. Your goal should be to excite people, tug at their heart strings, or fire them up to take action. You must prove that your organization understands audience pain points and is ready with solutions. Storytelling is perhaps the best way to reach your audience emotionally. It’s proven by neuroscience to engage the brain better than logic.
If you think your organization isn’t emotional, consider how you connect people, improve their careers, save them time, and make their lives better. Interview members and event participants to mine for emotionally engaging details about your association.
How to use all three appeals
Any effective marketing campaign will use all three Aristotelian appeals in varying proportions. Your audience and the product or service you are promoting will determine exactly what those proportions are. Prospects, for example, might require more ethos in your messages than current members. New product launches might need more logos to help people understand their value.
A good amount of pathos is mandatory in any campaign. Often, organizations get stuck on the logical side of their membership and products. They focus on the “what,” like features, facts, and figures. In reality, logos is often not as important as pathos. If all decisions were made purely based on logic, no one would own a sports car—and I wouldn’t have adopted a puppy.
When I was growing up, the only telephone in our house was a large rotary phone in the living room. It took forever to make a call by rotating the dial one digit at a time—especially when the phone number had lots of 7s, 8s, and 9s. But it got the job done and connected me to the people I needed to talk to. Today with my smartphone, I can check in with my family, order a pizza, and resupply my groceries in about the same time it would take to dial that old rotary phone.
Adding digital tools to your marketing mix is a bit like upgrading to a smartphone. If your goals include increasing membership, engagement, and non-dues revenues, it might be time to reshape your marketing with digital tactics. Innovative tools and technology can help you reach your objectives, often with a better ROI and less effort than traditional marketing methods.
Here are three tactics to consider.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing offers infinite possibilities for precise audience targeting based on your marketing objectives as well as a range of audience characteristics—from job titles to special interests, demographics, user behaviors, and more.
Ads for brand goals: Facebook, for example, allows you to create ads for specific goals, including brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, conversions, and more. You can upload your existing email list to target your known audience or to create a lookalike audience with similar characteristics.
Lead ads: Some social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, offer lead generation forms for easy lead captures. When a user clicks on your ad, for example to download a whitepaper you’re offering, they see a form that is automatically populated with their name and email address. They click “Submit” to receive your offer, and you receive their contact info.
Pixel code: Digital advertising also enables precise retargeting. By placing a snippet of code on your website, you can display your messages and offers in users’ social media feeds based on what they viewed on your site.
Email automation
Once you’ve captured contact info through digital marketing, you can nurture your leads with automated email drip campaigns. Email automation is commonly used to welcome new customers or subscribers with a series of background information about your company. Other uses for email automation include event promotion, membership renewal reminders, or lapsed member campaigns.
Email automation helps you reach more people in a more personalized way than traditional one-off campaigns. It also takes some items off your to-do list by automatically generating messages based on user behaviors. Advanced analytics and reporting show you opens, clicks, and conversions so you can refine your messaging based on what resonates best with your base.
If your email list isn’t producing the results you need, or its performance has declined over time, your list might be out of date. Sending to an outdated email list can hurt your deliverability, return on investment, and online reputation. Consider having a professional service scrub it for nonexistent accounts and spam traps. If too much of your list is unusable, you might need to invest in prospecting efforts to build it back up.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation software is an efficient way to manage your contacts, leads, social media, email communications, and the customer journey. It can help you segment your list, personalize messaging, schedule ongoing campaigns, and track results with real-time reporting. A recent study suggests that using marketing automation to nurture your prospects could result in a 451% increase in qualified leads. It works because it lets your members and prospects tell you what they need, when they need it.
Another benefit of marketing automation is that it offers detailed analytics and reporting capabilities. You can track your campaign performance over time to determine what works and what doesn’t. These valuable insights can help you improve performance going forward.
Efficient, personalized marketing
Reshaping your marketing doesn’t mean throwing out everything you’ve done in the past. A traditional marketing method such as direct mail might still have a place in your marketing mix. However, if you’re looking for an efficient way to provide personalized marketing that raises awareness, builds trust with your base, and drives conversions, you should seriously consider one or more of these digital solutions. A rotary phone still makes and receives calls to help you communicate, but a smart phone can do so much more.
My neighborhood is crawling with door-to-door salespeople. They come selling everything from television and internet services to home security systems. They have a knack for ringing the doorbell during the last five minutes of my favorite show. I’ve never bought anything from these people. Even if I needed the products they peddle, these invasive tactics are not the best way to earn my trust or my business.
A lead generation funnel can help you avoid bothering your target audience in a similar fashion as my door-to-door salespeople. And it will likely lead to better results because it meets people where they are. Learn the five stages of the lead generation funnel and how you can use this model to generate warm leads for your organization.
What is a lead gen funnel?
An inbound marketing lead generation funnel helps you move prospects through the customer journey from awareness to consideration to decision. Thanks to digital marketing and marketing automation, you can offer each prospect a personalized journey through the funnel depending on their goals, needs, and pain points. Compared to outbound marketing or purchasing leads, this approach generates a list of people who actually want to hear from you. It creates better results than a traditional sales funnel while saving you time, money, and effort.
A lead generation funnel has five stages:
Raise awareness
Capture contact info
Nurture
Convert
Give the VIP treatment
Raise awareness
In digital marketing, the lead generation process starts with raising awareness. People typically learn about your organization from one of these three sources:
Your content (blog, social media feeds, website, landing pages, product trials)
Paid advertising (Facebook and LinkedIn ads, pay per click, web retargeting)
Earned exposure (shares, third-party reviews, referrals, word of mouth)
When outlining your goals, keep in mind that the funnel is always larger at the top. Only a fraction of your leads will convert to members, attendees, and product purchasers. It is important to build a large enough prospect pool to meet your goals. You might need to increase your awareness efforts at the top of the funnel to meet your campaign goals.
Capture contact info
The next step in your lead generation funnel involves turning awareness into leads. For this you’ll need lead magnets and a way to capture contact info, such as lead generation forms or landing pages.
Here’s an example scenario: A Facebook user clicks on your ad with a special offer for a whitepaper. The link takes them to a landing page, where a lead generation form already contains their contact info. All the user needs to do is click the “Submit” button to download the content. At this point, the Facebook user is now a warm lead that you can nurture and convert.
Nurture
Before you can effectively nurture your leads, you’ll need to score them. Try to determine where they are on the customer journey. How much do they know about your organization? How urgent are their needs? What are their pain points?
Assign a numerical value to your leads based on established criteria. You should seek input from your sales team to help you determine meaningful criteria. For example, a lead score of 1 might be an unknown user who downloaded an information product. A 5 might be someone with urgent needs who filled out a complete contact form. Next, define follow-up processes for each lead score. For example, the 5s might go directly to your sales team, while the 1s go to an automated email drip campaign.
Convert
At some point, you will need to make a hard offer to convert your prospects into members, event attendees, and product purchasers. Consider offering a free trial or discount code to entice people to take action.
Timing will depend on your organization and your offer. Joining your organization or purchasing your products and services involve a significant investment of time, money, and effort on the part of your prospect. They need time to get to know you, trust you, and understand your value before making a decision. This process could take months or even years.
Give the VIP treatment
Your job isn’t over when you’ve converted a prospect. To fuel your retention, engagement, and non-dues revenues, you will need to continually satisfy your base over time. Plan to use your marketing automation tools to provide relevant offers and useful content on an ongoing basis to make your members feel valued.
Lead gen tools
The best way to manage your lead generation efforts is with a marketing automation platform or CRM software. These tools help you to provide relevant, timely communications that are personalized to the individual depending on where they are in the customer journey. They also save you time and effort.
Why you need a lead gen funnel
An inbound marketing lead gen funnel puts control in the hands of the customer, who decides what they need from you and when. This is the foundation for a lasting relationship built on trust and value, not on sales tactics, one-off promos, or intrusive doorbell dings.
On the weekends, you can find me at the beach with my standup paddleboard. I love everything about the sport. When I see a Facebook ad for the latest SUP equipment, I pay attention. I click. I submit my email address. I welcome the content, special offers, and other marketing messages I get in return. Thanks to all that communication, I’m up to speed on the best the marketplace has to offer. When I make a purchase, I’m willing to pay more for high-quality products, and I feel great about my transactions.
Imagine if your target audience was this eager to hear from you. Getting people to join, attend, and engage would be easy. But too often, people are tired of being “sold” to. They are generally skeptical that a brand will deliver on its promises. They hesitate to provide an email address in fear of receiving endless spam in return. But they still need products, services, and the support of associations.
So how can you get prospects’ attention, earn their trust, and entice them to engage with your organization—and feel great about it? You need a fresh approach to lead generation that includes creating valuable content and using it to convert visitors into prospects.
Here are six steps to increasing leads and conversions using a content-based lead generation strategy.
1. Capture leads
About half of your website visitors will never return if you don’t give them a reason to do so. You need to capture at least an email address to be able to communicate with potential prospects and move them through your sales funnel. Given inbox fatigue and data privacy concerns, your prospects won’t give you their email address on a whim. They need to trust you first.
2. Entice prospects with a lead magnet
To start building trust with prospects, you should offer them something of value in exchange for their email address—or offer it totally free if necessary. Provide content that speaks to audience pain points and solves their challenges.
Examples of lead magnets:
Infographics
Whitepapers
Surveys
Reports
Webinars
Free trials
Any other useful information
3. Use lead generation forms
In addition to offering this content on your website, you can take advantage of lead generation forms built into social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Lead generation forms automatically populate with a prospect’s contact information. All the user needs to do is to click “Download.” They instantly receive your content and you gain their email address. Lead generation forms are easy for prospects and highly effective for marketers.
4. Harness the power of landing pages
Customized landing pages are a great tool for lead generation for two reasons: They allow you to capture contact information, and they help you upsell to visitors. Once you have a prospect’s attention using a lead magnet, you can encourage them to join your association, purchase your products, or sign up for your newsletter by clicking through from the landing page.
5. Score your leads
Lead scoring is the practice ranking your leads to sort out the serious buyers from the tire kickers and everyone in between. Marketing automation software makes lead scoring an easy process based on actual user behaviors.
Once your leads are scored, you can determine how best to follow up. Serious prospects with urgent needs might go directly to your sales team. The tire kickers might convert over time, so they can go into a sales funnel, where they will receive automated email drip campaigns to move them along the customer journey.
6. Be patient
This approach to lead generation is a proven winner. But don’t expect it to work in a month or two. People need time to get to know your organization and your value before they trust you enough to join, attend, or purchase. Building a high-quality prospect list and then converting prospects to members could take six months to two years. But the results are undeniable. According to HubSpot, businesses who use a content-driven lead generation strategy see 67% more leads per month than those who do not use content.
How You’ll Benefit
This approach to lead generation is good for your prospects and good for your business. It helps you meet people where they are and it saves you from spending too much time and money on less interested prospects. With enough time and effort, your prospects will be as happy and engaged as I am when I buy a new SUP.
My dishwasher died recently, and I had no idea where to begin shopping for a new one. I found a tip sheet online that ranked popular models, so I provided my email address and downloaded it. I received additional info in my inbox and, eventually, a discount offer. By then, I knew exactly which dishwasher to buy and how much I should pay. I’m happy with the purchase I made. If I ever need another home appliance I know where to go.
My dishwasher experience is a great example of inbound marketing. They caught my attention, captured my email, and moved me along the customer journey until I made a purchase. If your association needs to build a prospect pool for your marketing and sales efforts, inbound marketing beats “spray and pray” outbound marketing any day.
Here are the four essential steps to inbound lead generation so you can attract prospects and convert them into members and brand ambassadors.
Step 1: Attract visitors
You must be deeply familiar with your target audience if you hope to attract their attention. Ask yourself the following questions:
What does your audience value most? For example, affiliation, exclusivity, cutting-edge information, cutting costs, philanthropy etc. What are their personal and professional goals? What are their pain points? How can you solve them? What are the current hot topics in your prospect’s industry? Where do prospects currently get information or services like the ones you provide?
Once you know what your audience needs and wants, you can craft valuable content that meets them where they are and compels them to interact with your organization.
Step 2: Turn visitors into prospects
When you offer valuable content such as infographics, surveys, reports, e-books, webinars, and whitepapers, a few important things happen:
People are willing to give you their email address in exchange for something that will help them. You can capture contact info using landing pages or lead generation forms on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Your prospect is automatically a more educated buyer. They learn meaningful criteria to use when shopping around, and they shop based on value instead of the lowest price.
They see your organization as a thought leader who has their best interest in mind. They start to trust you. They are more receptive to your messaging, and they might even seek out additional content from you.
When one or more of these things happen, you have successfully converted your visitor into a prospect or even a warm lead.
Step 3: Convert prospects to members and attendees
Over time, you can move your prospects from consideration to decision by regularly delivering valuable information. People will gradually see your organization as a source of help and benefits, rather than another marketer trying to sell them something. Eventually, they will be receptive to sales messages because they trust that you have their best interest in mind. Make your prospects an offer they can’t refuse to convert them to members and event attendees.
Be aware that this process could take some time. Multiyear investments into your inbound marketing yield the greatest rewards because you can build on what you’ve learned each year to fine-tune your efforts.
Step 4: Give the VIP treatment
Your job isn’t over once you’ve gained a new member. To ensure long-term loyalty, continue to learn about your members’ pain points and communicate the ways you can solve them. With help from a marketing automation platform, you can make each member feel like a VIP by offering personalized offers and information. Members who feel valued and who continually benefit from your organization are more likely to engage and renew.
Why inbound works
Inbound marketing is a good strategy whether you’re promoting membership or a specific product—like my dishwasher. It works because you’re paying attention to what people need, delivering useful content, and providing valuable offers to build trust over time. This is not just a recipe for gaining prospects and members. It’s a strategy for creating loyal brand ambassadors who will sustain your organization into the future.
Several years ago, in a brief fit of madness, I asked my barber to give me a different haircut and change my hair color while he was at it. I wanted to try something daring and edgy. The result was laughable. I looked like an Elvis Presley impersonator. It was unnatural. People I knew didn’t recognize me. My wife thought I was having a midlife crisis.
Your brand is a little bit like a tried-and-true haircut. Sure, you need an updated look every once in a while, but a major departure from your established style confuses people, turns them off, and makes them question your judgement.
How to Find and Fix Brand Breaks
Ideally, every aspect of your brand—your messaging and visuals as well as your mission and culture—fit seamlessly into the bigger picture of your organization. In reality, however, a brand often has breaks. Brand breaks are areas where misalignment happens. Some are minor inconsistencies in font or color choice. Others are more significant, for example if your sales team makes a promise that your organization can’t deliver on.
Eliminating brand breaks and maintaining a consist brand story helps people recognize you, trust you, pay your dues, attend your events, purchase your products, and rally behind your causes. Follow these four steps to solidify and articulate your brand, fix any brand breaks, and maintain a unified presence that engages your base.
1. Investigate your brand.
Establish a baseline so you can recognize any deviations from the norm. Examine your marketing collateral, event branding, product offerings, sales tactics, and any other unique aspects of your organization. Consider your internal culture, procedures, and communication practices. Look at your marketing channels and platforms—your event, social media, ads, direct mail, website, and more.
Also consider these questions:
Why do you do what you do?
Who do you serve?
What value do you offer your base?
How do you solve their challenges?
What is your mission, vision, position, and brand promise?
2. Articulate your brand.
The easiest way to ensure consistency over time and across channels is to create a brand guide. This is a way to document every aspect of your brand, from your mission and vision to your fonts and colors. A typical brand guide might include the following:
Mission statement
Vision statement
Brand positioning statement
Brand promise
Fonts and colors
Voice and sample messaging
Sample graphics and images
Proper use of your logo
Product descriptions
3. Close gaps.
As you create your brand guide, look for anything that doesn’t quite fit with the big picture or any item that’s missing altogether. Check for outdated images, messaging, or offers. Is your logo clear and simple? Are your fonts and colors consistent? Has your mission or positioning changed since you were established? Can you fulfill your brand promise?
At this stage you can eliminate anomalies, revamp your look and feel, tweak or overhaul your messaging, add or subtract product offerings, or launch initiatives to bolster your internal culture.
4. Get your team on board.
Brand consistency includes rallying your team behind your purpose and aligning your internal culture with your outward-facing materials. Once your brand guide is complete, distribute it to your entire team and make sure everyone understands how to use it and why it’s important.
Make a plan to revisit your brand guide periodically and make updates as necessary. Being consistent doesn’t mean being stagnant. It’s a good idea to entice people with fresh messaging, visuals, offers and products as long as you stay true to your core brand.
Why all this matters Establishing a strong, consistent brand is worth your time and effort because it’s worth money. A study from McKinsey & Company suggests that companies with a strong brand are 20 percent more profitable than companies with a weak or inconsistent brand.
If you can’t clearly and consistently articulate your mission, for example, chances are your sales team won’t be able to convey your value to members and prospects. When people don’t see your value, they don’t pay your dues, attend your events, purchase products, or tell others about your organization. If people don’t recognize your organization, they won’t engage. If your brand is different every place people encounter you, they can’t trust you. Without trust, it’s nearly impossible to turn prospects into attendees, members, and long-term brand ambassadors.
The good news is a bad haircut or dye job isn’t permanent. With a little time, effort, and your trusty style guide, you’ll be looking fabulous in no time.
When I was a kid, Valentine’s Day was one of my favorite days of the year. I would spend hours decorating my little brown paper bag before taping it to my desk at school on the big day. There was always nervous excitement and uncertainty. Would I get lots of cards from my friends? Would I get the good candy? Or would I get a bunch of rocks?
Marketing to your members and prospects in today’s uncertain times is a lot like my Valentine’s Day bag. You make plans, put in effort, and anticipate good results. But sometimes you get more rocks than chocolates.
The Effects of Uncertainty
Even if your organization isn’t directly involved in political or economic discussions, your members and prospects are affected by uncertainty. As a result, they might hesitate to attend your events, join your organization, engage with your offerings, or purchase your products.
What’s more, heightened privacy concerns mean people are less likely to give you their email addresses. They’re also generally fed up with all the marketing noise that bombards them daily. You simply can’t continue the same old tactics if you want to reach your goals. It’s time to reshape your marketing to best serve your base.
A better strategy is holistic digital marketing that combines high-value content with drip and nurture campaigns. This approach builds trust with your audience over time and moves them along a customer journey from awareness to consideration to decision.
Follow these six steps to mitigate uncertainty and drive conversions with holistic digital marketing.
1. Craft your brand stories
People relate to other people better than to organizations. They value third-party endorsements over marketing messages any day. A great way to get attention and engage your base is to showcase other humans who benefit from your work.
Interview your most enthusiastic members. Ask them pointed questions:
Why join now?
What is the ROI of joining?
What is the biggest takeaway of being a member?
Craft these stories with simple, conversational language. Broadcast them through paid and organic social media, landing pages, and email campaigns to build trust and reinforce the value of your organization.
2. Consider the customer journey
Even the best message can be unsuccessful if people aren’t ready to hear it. Consider where your prospects are in the customer journey BEFORE you sketch out your marketing plan. Ask yourself:
Have they ever heard of your organization?
Are they familiar with your products and services?
What are their pain points?
How urgent are their needs?
Prospects who are not very familiar with your organization will likely need some high-level introductory communications at first. Others who are ready to purchase might need more in-depth content to help them make a decision.
3. Identify brand breaks
A brand break is when some part of your culture or marketing doesn’t align with your core brand. Do your emails have a similar look and feel as your website? Is your social media voice the same as your direct mail voice? Is your internal culture aligned with your external communications? Aim for continuity across channels. If you have too many brand breaks, you’ll lose people along the customer journey.
4. Prove the ROI of your offerings
People often need hard numbers to justify paying your dues and attending your events. Look for any opportunity to quantify the value of your products and services to prove they are a worthy investment.
Do your products save members money? How much?
Does your organization offer discounts on other products and services? How much?
Do you facilitate connections that lead to new business or new revenue streams? What is the potential revenue? Do you have a case story to cite as a concrete example?
5. Test and monitor
Digital marketing makes it especially easy to test and track the success of your efforts. You can measure web visitors, engagement with your content, form submissions, likes, shares, and lots more. Determine which metrics are most important to your campaign goals before you launch a promotion. For example, website visitors might be more important in raising brand awareness. Form submissions might matter more if you’re building a prospect list.
6. Fix areas with low conversions
Digital marketing also makes it easy to adjust campaigns on the fly, for example, by changing the offer, messaging, image, or platform. If your landing page receives a lot of traffic but few people fill out the form, this could be an indication of a brand break or poor alignment with the customer journey. For the most scientific testing, fix only one variable at a time.
Holistic marketing means you look at all the parts together, including your organization, story, products and offerings as well as your members and prospects, where they are, and what they need. The more you can align your communications with the customer journey, the more successful your holistic marketing will be even in times of uncertainty. Keep doing the same old thing, and you’ll miss out on members, prospects, and engagement—and the good chocolate on February 14th.
Do you have a solid marketing strategy? That’s a great start. But is your strategy aligned with a strong internal culture?
Your organization’s culture has a direct impact on the success of your marketing and your company as a whole. To serve others well, your team must be aligned with your purpose and unified in their actions. Your members and prospects must trust that you’re the same in front of an audience as behind the scenes. Trust is the foundation of lasting loyalty and long-term sustainability.
While the idea of culture might seem like an abstract concept that’s hard to pin down, it is a knowable thing that can be shaped and enhanced to fuel your success as an organization.
What is culture?
Culture includes your organization’s values, character, practices, and worldview. It guides employee behaviors and attitudes. Your organization’s culture should be unique, a differentiator that draws your base to you. It should reflect your purpose, why you do what you do beyond making a profit. To define your purpose, ask yourself: What is our reason for existing?
Your culture starts with your internal team, but it doesn’t stay there. When your leaders, sales team, marketing, and HR are all aligned with your purpose, your prospects and members can see and experience your culture too. Your culture becomes your brand. It’s how you make an emotional connection with your audience and start to build that all-important trust.
What is a brand?
Your brand is the outward manifestation of your culture. It includes your logo, images, messaging, and marketing collateral, but it’s more than that. It’s your authentic self you show to the world. It compels people to interact with your company and helps them get to know you, your purpose, and your culture. It inspires possibilities in your audience and incites action.
How to Start your Culture to Enhance your Brand (and your Marketing ROI)
1. Articulate your purpose.
Culture starts with purpose. Craft a short statement that illustrates your organization’s purpose. Distribute it to your team. Here are a few examples to get you started:
Apple improves lives through excellence and innovation.
United Way exists to help those in need.
Walmart improves lives by providing low prices.
Ben & Jerry’s thrives on being socially and environmentally conscious.
2. Define your long-view vision.
Before you outline this year’s marketing strategy, you need to know what you’re working towards over the long term. Identify goals for the next five to 10 years to get everyone on board the same train.
3. Align strategy with vision and culture.
Focus on your core competencies and key differentiators when planning your strategy. Keep your long-view vision in mind as you plan current marketing initiatives. Make sure you can deliver on your promises to foster trust with your base.
4. Engage your team.
When your employees are engaged, they go the extra mile for your organization. They put time and energy into innovative solutions that help you grow and thrive. By default, your prospects and members have a better experience with your brand.
5. Identify strengths and gaps in culture.
It’s okay if you discover that your culture and brand are not fully aligned or perhaps that your employees are not deeply engaged. Take some time to examine your internal culture for brand breaks, any place where your brand and culture don’t align. Also note when something is working well so you can do more of it.
6. Outline steps to close gaps and improve culture.
Once you know your strengths and opportunities, make a plan to close gaps going forward. This might involve creating new rules, metrics, and incentives to shape your culture. Change can be challenging for your team, so take a gradual, step-by-step approach.
7. Monitor progress and celebrate milestones.
Lasting cultural change can take some time, but the payoff is huge. It could mean the difference between success and failure for your organization. When you notice an improvement, celebrate it. Let your team know that they’re doing great things and it’s making a difference for your organization.
There is no difference between a brand and a culture. When your entire organization lives and breathes your culture, your members and prospects will feel it. They’ll be able to trust you, which is the first step to getting them to rally behind your causes and support your organization with long-term loyalty.
In the current climate of data breaches and over communication, people are more protective of their email addresses than ever. Online forms are seeing a 10 to 20 percent drop in conversion rates across industries.
While people may not readily provide their email address, they still seek information about your organization. They’re out there kicking your tires and poking around your website—even though they’re not exactly raising their hands to be contacted. How can you engage these potential prospects when you don’t know who they are?
Marketing automation to the rescue.
Using a combination of digital ads, landing pages, and email automation, you can move these prospects from awareness to consideration to decision. You can build trust by offering value at each stage of the customer journey. Over time, your efforts will compel them to act by filling out a lead form, attending your event, or joining your organization.
Try one of these three strategies to engage your unknown prospects:
1. Nurture your website visitors.
Using pixel codes, you can track where people spend time on your website. Sometimes you can match the user’s cookies with an email address to send targeted messages and offers. Even if you can’t make an exact match, you’ll gain valuable intel on what your audience is most interested in.
2. Retarget users where they spend time online.
Retargeting means you show digital ads to your website visitors elsewhere on the web. To be effective, you should tailor your retargeted ads based on the type of content your user views, such as pricing information or a specific offering.
3. Follow up on high-quality leads.
Savvy marketing automation includes tracking and scoring your leads to determine next steps for each individual. High-quality leads may warrant extra email communication, a special offer, or even a phone call to convert.
It’s about trust.
Marketing automation is more effective than one-off campaigns because it’s based on delivering value and building trust. Sure it takes more time, but the payoff is worth it: You get a group of passionate, loyal followers who are eager to hear from you and compelled to act, rather than hitting the delete button and moving on. Ultimately, it means people engage with your organization and spread the word about your important work.
Effective social media marketing involves tactics that cover each stage of the customer journey. During the awareness phase, your efforts will focus on generating traffic and expanding your prospect pool. For the consideration phase, you need tactics to educate customers and help you qualify leads. The decision phase requires specific offers and calls to action. Thankfully, there are a wealth of social media tools to help you precisely target your efforts based on your sales funnel and your goals.
Awareness
Social media can help you raise awareness and expand your prospect pool based on specific criteria, such as geography, demographics, online behaviors, past history with your organization, lookalike audiences, or other categories.
Organic tactics are a good place to start. You might try Facebook Live, social media contests, links to free content, YouTube videos, or regular posts on your LinkedIn or Facebook feeds. However, some platforms only show your organic posts to a small segment of your audience. You will likely need to include paid tactics in your awareness efforts also.
Effective paid tactics include sponsored content on LinkedIn as well as Facebook and Instagram ads. Note, however, that paid content doesn’t have to include a sales pitch. In the awareness phase, you should provide free resources and ungated content to spread the word about your organization and build trust with your potential audience.
Consideration
During the consideration stage, give your audience increasingly in-depth information to help them move toward a decision. Qualify and score your leads based on their interaction with your messages.
Organic social media tactics for consideration include
Sharing positive reviews on your Facebook page
Posting photos of your organization on Instagram
Participating in Ask Me Anything sessions on Reddit
Creating video testimonials from members and sharing across platforms
Making educational or how-to videos for use on YouTube
Conducting quizzes or contests to encourage interaction
Paid tactics include Facebook remarketing ads with details about your events and offerings. You can also use sponsored Facebook or LinkedIn posts with customer reviews or third-party blog posts.
In this stage, third-party content such as reviews, testimonials, articles, and photos can have a powerful effect on your target audience. By some estimates, user-generated content can lead to twice as many conversions as messages directly from your organization. Tap into the power of peer influence by recruiting and incentivizing social influencers who are willing to talk about your organization and your offerings online.
Decision
Leverage your social media efforts to nudge your prospects into action with specific offers and direct calls to action.
Organic tactics for the decision phase include
Inviting your social traffic to sign up for your email list
Hosting social media contests with promotions and purchase incentives
Running Facebook and Instagram ads with limited-time discounts or special offers
Linking to landing pages with gated content
You can boost many of the above organic tactics by paying for additional exposure on your existing social media platforms. You might also try Facebook messenger ads or Pinterest buy buttons.
Invest in your entire funnel
Don’t make the mistake of investing in only one or two stages of the customer journey, perhaps to save money or time. This could leave you short on prospects, qualified leads, and/or conversions. A better strategy is to map out your customer journey, including social media tactics for each stage. From there, use an automation platform to ensure customers receive what they need when they need it based on their actual behaviors. The efficiency and precise targeting will save you time and money while boosting your ROI.
Integrating with your overall marketing strategy
Not only is social media effective in moving people through your sales funnel, It can also enhance your other marketing efforts. For example, according to a study by Salesforce, your email openers are 22% more likely to purchase if they’ve also been reached with Facebook ads. Another study found that web visitors who have been exposed to your messages previously are three to five times more likely to convert than cold traffic.
One-off campaigns or clever sales pitches just don’t work anymore to convert prospects into attendees, members, and loyal brand ambassadors. People need time to get to know you, explore your offerings, understand your value, and come to trust that you will deliver on your promises. They undergo a journey from awareness to consideration to decision. Creating a customer journey map can help you take a more precise, strategic approach to guiding prospects along that journey.
What is a customer journey map?
A customer journey map is a diagram of all the steps prospects go through when engaging with your organization. It includes how they first learned about you, the research and education they undergo in their decision-making process, and the action steps they take along the way—from signing up for your email list to attending your events.
At the heart of a customer journey map is the customer. To most effectively move prospects along their journeys, you must become very familiar with their wants, needs, and pain points. What are their goals? What keeps them up at night? Get to know your customer so you know how to help them.
What are the stages of the customer journey?
The initial stages of the customer journey are awareness, consideration, and decision. If you’re successful in these three phases, some members will continue on to become loyal brand ambassadors.
Awareness
This is where a customer first learns about your brand. They might have read one of your blog posts, seen a testimonial, viewed a Facebook ad, or heard about you from a colleague.
For most organizations, increasing brand awareness is an active pursuit. It might include the following tactics:
Publish free educational content
Create blog posts, webinars, tools, templates, or guides
Use video to inform while showcasing your authentic brand persona
Publish a free email newsletter
Promote content via social media posts and paid ads
Avoid making a sales pitch in the initial stages of the customer journey. This is your chance to engage prospects and build trust by providing valuable resources with no strings attached.
Consideration
Once a prospect is aware of your organization, they will likely undergo a period of consideration. In this stage, they’re not quite ready to take action, but they are interested in learning more.
Move people toward a decision by providing content that will help them see whether your organization can solve their pain points. Be aware that it could take a while—perhaps 10 or more touch points. This is still not the time for a sales pitch. Focus instead on your value proposition and what’s in it for the customer.
Useful tactics for the consideration stage:
Case studies, reviews, and testimonials
How-to content that showcases your events, products, and offerings
Demo videos, product descriptions, and data sheets
Social media ads that lead to free downloadable content
At the same time your prospects evaluate your organization, you should also evaluate your prospects. Qualify your leads in this stage so you know where to focus your time, effort, and budget.
Decision
How long the customer journey lasts depends on many factors, including the cost of your product, length of the engagement, complexity of the offer, and more. Regardless, at some point, you will need to make a pitch and ask for a decision so you and your prospect can move forward.
Useful tactics for the decision stage:
Ask your social media followers to sign up for your email list
Make limited-time offers that create urgency
Run Facebook ads that lead to landing pages with gated content
Send direct mail promotions
Call high-quality leads to make a personal connection
The tactics you choose may depend on the lead score of your prospects. For example, actively engaged prospects might receive additional communications and special promotions. High-quality leads might warrant a phone call or premium direct mail piece. Less active prospects might be moved to an automated email list.
Your guide to relationship marketing
Mapping the entirety of your customer journey may seem daunting, but don’t worry. You’re really just creating a simple guide for efficient relationship marketing. Start with the three broad categories: awareness, consideration, and decision. Then fill in each with details on goals, tactics, specific content, KPIs, and metrics for measurement.
Despite what you might have heard about the “selfie generation,” millennials are a powerful force eager to throw their passion and energy behind causes they care about. A recent report found that 85% of millennials donate to charity and 70% actually roll up their sleeves and volunteer their time. Millennials are also incredibly adept at raising awareness and rallying support via their social networks and digital influence.
You can harness these tendencies to benefit your association in untold ways, from gaining and retaining younger members to achieving more outcomes and long-term sustainability.
The first step in engaging millennials is to give them a cause to care about. Millennials (and many of your other members) are more likely to support a cause than an organization. Once you solidify your cause, there are a number of approaches you can use to reach this influential group of young people.
Embrace technology
Millennials are the first generation that grew up with technology at their fingertips. They get their news from social media, not newspapers. They sleep near their phones. They are accustomed to fresh, new information instantly—most often on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
The presentation and delivery of your messages are more important than content (at least initially). For starters, ensure all your content is mobile friendly. Video is a must. Include memes and engaging images as part of your strategy. Share links to useful information. Use microsites and interactive messaging. Be brief. Can you say something meaningful and inspiring about your cause in 10 seconds or less? That’s the length of a Snapchat video.
Deliver value
Millennials mistrust traditional advertising methods. A better approach is to focus on delivering value. Use content marketing to educate, inform, and entertain your millennial audience. Provide resources and tools that help them do their jobs better and change more lives. Prove your association offers value, and millennials will come to trust you, attend your events, and pay your dues.
How can you know what millennials value? Hire some. Put one on your board. Chat with them online. Assemble focus groups or conduct surveys to determine what their core concerns are. Find out as much as you can about which causes they support, how they get their information, and what’s on the horizon.
Leverage social media
Social media is powerful vehicle for promoting your cause and targeting specific audiences using paid ads. But it’s more than that. Millennials are highly influenced by the actions and opinions of their peers. They value third-party reviews and recommendations more than the content coming directly from your organization. Create a culture of social influencers by providing free resources and encouraging or incentivizing your members to talk about your cause online.
Offer a seamless user experience
Make it simple and intuitive to support your cause and your association. Include buttons along with your calls to action. Publish sharable content. Make it easy to leave comments and reviews. Enhance in-person events with digital content members can access at home. When millennials have a positive experience with your cause, they will continue to work hard to support it.
Keep it fresh
Live streaming capabilities are an indication of just how fast millennials like their information—as it is happening and not a moment later. How can you keep up with this need for speed? Publishing engines and artificial intelligence can generate content or answer questions automatically. You will also need to invest time and personnel to ensure a steady stream of personalized, meaningful messaging and resources to rally millennials to your cause.
For many associations, reaching millennials is a new frontier that requires significant time and effort. While this might seem daunting, it’s well worth the investment. Your organization will be rewarded with passion and energy for years to come.
If you’ve ever procrastinated on giving the-birds-and-the-bees talk to your kid or having an uncomfortable conversation with a friend, you know that we tend to put off difficult things.
We avoid difficult things in business, too. Often, we do the easy-to-understand thing over and over again, even if it produces poor results. The hard-to-understand thing promises better results . . . but it can feel so complicated!
We run into this thinking with associations when we talk about lead generation funnels and customer journeys. While no association executive has ever held their ears closed and said, “La la la, I can’t hear you!” when we talk about lead gen, we can tell from their frightened looks and body language it’s what they want to do.
If you’re afraid of a lead generation funnel, you’re afraid of the wrong thing. A lead gen funnel is the only thing standing in the way of your association becoming obsolete in the next five years. Tactics like random fishing on LinkedIn and buying lists to import into your database may have been effective once, but they no longer work.
You have to be smarter.
The good news is, we make it easy for you because we’ve done the hard work of engineering smart funnels that guide prospects along the journey they choose, so they wind up at your landing page, clicking “Join Now.”
Lead generation funnels solve a big problem for member organizations: They help you increase membership and event attendance. They do this by expanding your prospect pool, turning your prospects into qualified leads, and then turning your qualified leads into members.
A lead generation funnel is essentially a holistic, digital map that guides your prospects along a journey. It’s fully automated and built out using an “if/then” system.
For example:
IF a prospect clicks to watch a Facebook video, THEN they are taken to a landing page with a simple call-to-action to stay connected.
IF they enter their email on that page, THEN they go into a drip/nuture email campaign with its own set of “if/thens.”
IF they don’t enter their email, THEN they are re-targeted on Facebook, or perhaps another platform, and the process repeats.
A good lead generation funnel engages with multiple social media platforms and uses responsive list management software that ushers prospects through the journey.
Because it’s automated, after you create your funnel, all you have to do is hit “go.”
Know Your Numbers: Prospect Pools, Qualified Leads, and Conversion Ratios
A lead generation funnel helps you get clear on your numbers.
For example, do you have any idea how large your prospect pool is?
This is often the first stumbling block for associations. They have no idea what number they are starting with. Is it 500? 5,000? 50,0000?
This math matters, because you need to know how many people you’re starting with so you can keep track of the percentage of those people who become qualified leads, and then the percentage of qualified leads who become members.
These are your conversion ratios.
If you don’t know these ratios, you’re just guessing. And while guessing is a legitimate strategy on a standardized test when you don’t know the right answer, it doesn’t tend to hold up as a sustainable marketing strategy.
Your funnel will help to determine your ratios. You’ll be able to track how many people you are talking to each step of the way, so you know your numbers.
Conversion Assets: High Quality Content That Inspires
Your automation has to be spot-on, but your funnel is only as good as the content that feeds it.
You always needhigh-quality, sticky content, including captivating videos, well-written stories, and compelling graphics.
Though your prospect pool is large, you still need to think carefully about what will catch a prospect’s eye and hit their pain points. At each point along the way, you need strong conversion assets. These assets include landing pages, emails, videos, blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, webinars, and direct mail pieces.
Just because you’re introducing math into the mix, it doesn’t mean you can stop focusing on inspiring people. In fact, you need to focus even more strongly on inspiring people.
More than anything, you need to shift your thinking from one-off campaigns to a holistic approach that blends extraordinary storytelling with the best that marketing automation can offer.
Why put it off when it can make all the difference for the future of your association?
Instead of spinning around in overwhelm, let us walk you through what a lead gen funnel could look like for your organization. Contact Us Today >
Your members want to feel part of something bigger than themselves. They want to make a difference in the lives of others. Sure, your organization has offerings to help them make a difference—education, conferences, certifications, and networking. But, increasingly, these are not compelling enough reasons to pay dues, travel to your events, sign up for workshops, or spend time on your networks.
People need a more powerful reason to engage. They need a cause.
When people care about a cause, they are willing to throw their passion, energy, time, and money behind it. There is almost nothing they won’t do if they think it will make a difference. This is a powerful force your association can tap into to drive outcomes, build long-term loyalty, and ensure sustainability.
What defines a cause
A cause is a simple, easily understandable, highly relevant idea that members can embrace, rally around, and spread. It’s more than a short-lived marketing campaign or slogan. And it’s more powerful than any event, product, or certification you can offer.
A cause must be something your members truly care about, and it must have movement behind it. The goal is to unite people and incite action to change more lives. Your members, especially the millennials, are more likely to support a cause than a particular organization.
Great examples of current cause marketing include REI’s #OptOutside campaign and Walgreens’ Red Nose Day. Even Apple taps into this idea with its focus on innovation and lifestyle versus actual products.
How you can use cause marketing
Cause marketing starts with values, not a sales pitch. People are naturally drawn to individuals and entities that share their values. To identify your association’s underlying values, consider why you do the work you do. Next, match your values to audience values, goals, and pain points. From there, you’ll need to incorporate these ideas into your messages and offers.
Here are four ways to let values drive your cause marketing:
1. Use “because”
The word “because” can help you connect the dots between your association’s values and those of your audience. Consider the difference between the sentences below. The first one merely states a feature, while the second one inspires possibilities.
Attend our conference for exclusive networking opportunities.
Attend our conference because you’ll connect with industry veterans who are eager to help you.
2. Include compelling visuals
Really show people what it’s like to support your cause by including dynamic, original visuals in your campaigns. Images with emotion move people while they tell your story. Be sure to choose visuals that are in line with the rest of your brand’s look and feel for continuity.
3. Don’t make it about you
Keep the focus on the audience and the cause, not on your organization. It doesn’t matter if your association is the biggest or oldest or if your offerings are the best. People really only care about the benefits that result from your efforts. Answer these questions: How will your association, conference, or offerings change lives? Who would be affected if your organization didn’t exist?
4. Prove your value
If you can’t prove that your cause is making a difference, people won’t support it. Track progress toward goals and celebrate major milestones. Publish your successes on social media and in your marketing campaigns. Show people their efforts generate real results and they’ll keep up the good work.
It’s time for new tactics
Many marketing tactics that worked in the past just aren’t resonating these days. No matter how great your message or offer is, people are tired of yet another sales pitch. They also have too many alternatives at their fingertips when it comes to information, training, and thought leadership. It’s often hard to justify an expense, like attending a conference. But it’s much easier to justify supporting a cause you believe in. It’s for the good of the world, after all.
Cause marketing is especially effective when it comes to reaching millennials. This generation values social responsibility. They want to make a difference. Millennials are passionate, energetic, and dedicated, but only if they really care. Give them a reason to care. Give them a cause they can rally around. (More on how to reach this key group next time.)
In fashion, everything old becomes new again. Thin ties were out, and then back in. Glasses were oversized, then small, and then large again. Right now, the 1990s are having their renaissance, with rompers and high-waisted jeans all the rage.
The idea that everything becomes new again works beautifully for the runway.
It does not, however, work so well for associations and membership organizations.
The 1990s are definitely not back in again when it comes to thinking about why people join and engage with your association. However, a lot of associations are stuck there.
What do we mean by stuck in the 1990s?
We mean focusing all marketing and outreach efforts around education and networking. We mean laying out everything you offer in a direct mail piece or an email that essentially says, “We’re the only ones who have this! Come and get it!”
A few decades ago, when there wasn’t as much to compete with, people simply joined the association their mentor, boss, colleague, or previous person in their job joined. People followed the path set before them. Join this association. Here are the benefits. This is what you do.
This mindset was fairly standard, and it worked pretty well. For a while.
It doesn’t work anymore though. The most obvious reason it stopped working is that there are far more channels to compete with now. Professionals can get education through webinars. They can hear thought leadership by watching TED talks, reading blogs, or listening to podcasts. They can network through social media.
Essentially, your association is competing with what they can access on their phones.
The second reason, and the one that associations struggle even more to understand, is that the marketing tactics that worked on Baby Boomers do not connect nearly as well with Millennials, or even the younger side of GenXers.
These populations are looking for something else.
What are they looking for? This is one of the questions keeping leaders of membership associations up at night.
Luckily, we have the answer.
Cause Marketing for Membership Organizations
We’ll get right to the point: Your association needs a cause.
By cause, we mean a simple, easily understandable, highly relevant idea that members can embrace, rally around, and spread.
A cause is not the same thing as a marketing campaign. A campaign is short lived, and usually has a clear beginning and ending. A cause, by contrast, is about the long view.
The right cause inspires people and spurs action. Unlike education and networking, which are plentiful outside of your association, your cause is unique to who your association is and why it exists.
A cause is an idea, which you articulate in a succinct phrase. It’s more than a slogan. A cause must have movement behind it. It must direct what your association focuses on, how you allocate your resources, and how you bring new members into the fold.
Millennials are not a shallow, entitled group, despite how much other generations like to pick on them. They are incredibly savvy and unapologetically passionate—but only about things they truly care about.
To get them to care about you, you need a cause that speaks to them.
But first, you have to get their attention.
Reaching a Millennial Audience
Can you communicate something valuable and inspiring related to your cause in 10 seconds or less? That’s the length of a Snapchat video. We call it the “Snapchat test.” It doesn’t mean you only ever have 10 seconds, but it’s a good idea to start thinking along those lines.
In fact, you most likely need to rethink your communication approach altogether, if you are still using tactics from the 1990s (or even from the 2000s or early 2010s).
In 2023, effective marketing is about using one channel to lead, and another to follow up. Just like a smart phone can “hand off” to a computer, or a tablet can “hand off” to a television, you need a strategy for “handing off” content between platforms.
The key is that you need to tweak your communication plan based on how your audience is behaving. Their next moves after engaging with your content determine your next moves.
That might look like . . .
Leading with a Facebook video, and remarketing on Facebook again to people who have shown interest.
Leading with a LinkedIn post and then retargeting on Facebook to those people who showed interest.
Leading with a Snapchat video, and then retargeting on Facebook.
Leading with digital and then following up with marketing automation.
All of your association’s thoughtful and strategic work in articulating your cause will be lost if you go back to a 1990s way of trying to reach an audience. Today’s audience simply isn’t in the same place as your audience used to be, and they are not behaving in the same way.
Your association has to LEAD if you want to attract Millennials, and then—just as important—you need to FOLLOW them where they go and keep the conversation going.
In other words, you need long-view thinking (a strong cause to rally around) with shorter-view action (using the latest tools and content platforms).
Wear all the high-waisted jeans you want, but 1990s marketing best practices are not coming back. It’s time for your association to embrace the NOW.
If you are the leader of a membership organization, your single most important priority right now is to develop and articulate the cause that your members and perspective members can rally around.
Do you know it? Can you write it on a cocktail napkin? Can you get it across in 10 seconds?
Need help? Borrow our brain, and let’s see if we can come up with it together.
If you’re like most professional organizations, you put on your professional hat when you get to the office every day. You’re in the trenches, focused on finding new members, boosting attendance numbers, growing your prospect list, and analyzing the data. You’re up to your elbows in opens, clicks, and conversions.
When the numbers aren’t what you want, you try new messages and offers—you send more and more emails. Despite all your efforts, your numbers still disappoint.
So what’s the deal? There is a disconnect.
Talking to your members and prospects as if they are data points or retention numbers is cold and creates detachment. Communications that are purely professional don’t inspire people. They don’t empathize with pain points or let people get to know you. What’s missing is the human element. You must cross over—shift from professional to personable to engage people and build lasting loyalty.
“Forward movement is not helpful if what is needed is a change of direction.”
This shift is more than just the way you talk to people. It involves being mindful of your members—even when you don’t immediately profit from doing so. It means taking a holistic approach that considers the bigger picture and meets people where they are.
The great news is that once you make this shift, all your numbers will dramatically improve. People will feel valued. They will feel accountable to you, another human. As a result, they will join, renew, attend, volunteer, and engage. They will bring others into your fold. They’ll roll up their sleeves and rally around your initiatives.
You must be real and transparent if you want people to engage on a meaningful level. If you can’t shift your thinking to forge authentic human relationships— nothing else you do will matter.
Once you establish your holistic email marketing strategy and set your campaigns in motion, you will need to monitor performance to see if all your hard work pays off. Common email metrics such as deliverability, opens, clicks, and unsubscribe rates are good starting points to measure performance. But these metrics only tell part of the story. Also consider your specific goals, such as growing your subscriber list, increasing event attendance, or converting prospects into members. If your email campaigns aren’t performing to expectations, examine individual metrics as well as the big picture to see where you can improve.
Here are six common email issues and what you can do to boost your results using a holistic approach.
Poor Deliverability
If your deliverability rates are low, chances are your list is outdated or it was purchased from a less-than-reputable source. The highest quality list is one you create organically by asking people to opt-in—through in-person events, digital advertising, or other marketing efforts. It’s virtually impossible to have successful holistic email marketing without a clean list of interested members and prospects.
Too Few Clicks to Landing Page
If your landing page didn’t get as many views as you would like, you may need to work harder to drive more traffic there. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to send more emails. Research from Informz suggests relevancy, rather than frequency, has a greater impact on click rates. Examine your message to make sure it resonates with your audience and aligns with the customer journey.
Other factors such as time of day and day of the week also affect open and click rates. Experiment or A/B test to maximize your results once you have your messaging dialed in. Some marketing automation platforms have an optimization tool that automatically sends emails based on a subscriber’s past behavior.
High Unsubscribe Rate
Generally speaking, your unsubscribe rate for each campaign should be less than 1%. Any more than that could indicate that the people on your list did not formally subscribe—or that they subscribed with certain expectations that aren’t being met. Revisit the criteria for placing someone on your list. Set clearer expectations by revising any communications that encourage people to opt-in.
Low Conversions
If people were moved to click on your email but didn’t convert on your landing page, it could mean your offer was not compelling enough. Ask yourself: Is this offer relevant to the target segment? Does it enable their goals or solve a pain point? Is it aligned with the buying cycle? Is the timing right? Keep in mind your offers might vary depending on the segment. Determine what matters most to each segment, and tailor your offers accordingly. Feature only one call to action in each email to avoid confusing your audience or losing people along the way.
Few New Leads
If your email campaign didn’t generate as many new leads as you would like, give people a reason to share your content. Consider providing a link to a free download that’s worth forwarding on. You might also incentivize your message. For example, offer a two-for-one registration special if a member attends your event with a colleague.
Disappointing Membership or Attendance Numbers
If your email campaign didn’t generate enough members or event attendees, you may need to revise your automated workflows. Consider adjusting your offers, timing, frequency, or other factors. Examine lead scores and segments to help you optimize your message and formats.
Keep in mind that email is only part of your overall holistic marketing strategy. The success of your email campaigns is linked to the rest of your branding efforts—including your digital advertising, collateral, direct mail pieces, and in-person events. You might need to tweak your other efforts to maximize results from your email campaigns.
The Big Picture
Analyzing individual metrics is essential to optimizing your email marketing performance. But don’t forget to look at the big picture as well. Segmentation, personalization, and automation improve email results across the board but only when they’re well informed and well executed. Spend some time getting to know your audience and their behaviors. Based on the data, ask yourself if your segments are meaningful categories that help you focus your efforts. Verify that your campaign themes are relevant and inspiring. Consider whether you communicate the measurable ROI of your events and offers. Determine your timing in light of the customer journey as well as other industry events.
Examining these global considerations—and making adjustments based on your analysis—will not only improve your holistic email marketing. It will improve all your marketing and engagement efforts. When all your initiatives are integrated to present a seamless brand experience, it’s easier to rally your base into action—to attend your events, volunteer for committees, or achieve breakthroughs in your industry. Your goal with email and other channels should always be thoughtful communications that show your value while enabling your audience’s goals.
In a perfect world, every marketing email you send would be a personalized, one-to-one communication based on everything you know about your recipient. It would provide meaningful information and just the right offer to meet their current needs. While it’s not practical to send everyone on your list a personal email at every step of their customer journey, holistic email marketing is the next best thing.
Holistic email marketing puts the customer first. It lets the member or prospect tell you what they need when they need it so you can deliver a seamless brand experience. This customer-first approach also benefits your organization and your industry. It can dramatically improve your email campaign results while fueling engagement, event attendance, membership, and retention. Getting started with holistic email marketing requires three components: segmentation, personalization, and automation.
Segmented Audience Targeting
To provide the most relevant, timely email messages and offers, you will first need to look at your audience and group them into meaningful categories, called segments. Research shows that segmented email campaigns achieve better results than mass emails.
Consider dividing your list based on a contact’s defining characteristics, such as industry, job title, geographic location, or lead score. You can also segment based on an existing list, such as past event attendees. Another approach would be to segment by actions taken, for example, a form submission or purchase made. You will also need to determine where individuals are in their customer journey: Are they new to your organization? Are they first timers or veteran event attendees? Has their membership lapsed? Is it time to renew?
6 Types of Personalized Communications
Once you establish your audience segments, the next step is to personalize messages for each group. Personalized emails are immediately more relevant to your audience. They reduce perceived information overload, and they boost engagement. Depending on your audience segments, you might send one of these six emails tailored to the customer journey.
Welcome emails—provide background information for those new to your organization; include offers that reassure their intent and encourage them to engage
Lead nurturing—help people move through the buying cycle by sending regular messages that show your organization’s value and promote year-round engagement
Event promotion—send registration emails, special promotions, and post-event follow-up to drive attendance and encourage repeat attendance
Inactive subscriber campaigns—target individuals on your list who haven’t opened or clicked in a while with messages and offers that compel them to re-engage
Membership renewal messages—send emails based on when individual memberships expire to fuel your retention efforts
Lapsed member campaigns—schedule a drip campaign to invite lapsed members to rejoin your organization, attend an event, and engage with peers again
To achieve the greatest results, you should pair each email with a custom landing page that has the same look and feel, messaging, and offer as your email. The landing page should also present an easy way for your audience to take action. For example, include an obvious button to click or form to fill out. Make only one offer to avoid overwhelming people or losing them along the way. Also ensure that your landing page is mobile optimized for efficient navigation.
Marketing Automation
The third component in holistic email marketing is automation. Holistic email marketing takes cues from your audience members’ actual behaviors to determine next steps—such as a phone call, direct mail piece, or another email message. To streamline this process without draining your staff resources and budget, you can use a marketing automation platform, such as Informz.
Using marketing automation, you can set up custom workflows, schedule emails, and score leads as they come in. Once you establish the workflows, the platform takes care of the next steps automatically. You monitor performance as you go and make adjustments to headlines, copy, offers, and visuals as needed.
Why Holistic Email Marketing?
Simply put, people are more likely to engage in issues that matter to them personally. Before you launch another email campaign, ask yourself, “How can we help our members and prospects achieve their objectives?” Quite often, the answer to this question will vary based on your individual audience members. Some need to become aware of your organization and its benefits. Others seek specific tools to advance their careers. Perhaps others need a little nudge to re-engage with your organization.
Holistic email marketing helps you reach all these individuals with relevant, personalized messages no matter where they are in their customer journey. The result is eager, engaged members and attendees that work hard for your organization year after year.
Once you’ve outlined your holistic digital marketing strategy, it’s time to choose the platforms and tools that will propel your organization toward your goals. A combination of retargeting, email marketing, segmentation, and automation is effective for reaching members and finding new prospects.
Retargeting and Prospecting
Depending on your goals, you can use retargeting to reach existing members (a.k.a. known users) or lookalike audiences based on your current member profile (a.k.a. unknown users). You can focus your efforts on a single platform, such as Facebook, or use web retargeting for a potentially broader reach.
To achieve results for web retargeting, you will likely need to enlist the help of a partner, such as AdRoll, for sufficient purchasing power. For many associations, Facebook offers more affordable solutions and better results.
Facebook Retargeting
Facebook is the most popular social media platform (with nearly 2 billion users!) and it offers great potential to reach your target audiences and convert users to members and attendees. With Facebook’s custom audiences and lookalike audiences, you can segment ads, measure conversions, and optimize campaigns. New features, such as audience insights, offline events, analytic reports, and product catalogs offer additional opportunities.
Segmentation
Before you launch any campaigns, consider segmenting your list into broad categories. Segmentation contributes to holistic marketing because you can use it to tailor your messaging based on what the individuals in your audience need to hear.
For your retargeting efforts, segmenting increases the relevancy of your message and boosts response as a result. For email marketing, segmentation leads to higher opens, clicks, and conversions. How much higher? MailChimp estimates that segmented email campaigns see a 14.31% higher open rate and a 100.95% higher click rate than non-segmented campaigns.
To take advantage of the benefits of segmentation, first define your segments. Consider categories such as first-time and repeat attendees, members and prospects, stage of the buying cycle, age, demographics, or location. Aim for no more than three audience segments (any more than three can be too complex to manage). Then, on a per message basis, determine whether each promotion goes to a specific segment or your entire audience.
Holistic SEO
Another component of holistic digital marketing is your search engine optimization. While SEO of the past was centered around keywords and backlinks, today’s SEO is all about relevancy to the user. It is increasingly content-driven. For best results, your content should be integrated with your other digital marketing efforts, such as your social media marketing, web retargeting, and email campaigns.
Marketing Automation
Integrated marketing is made infinitely easier with a marketing automation platform, such as Informz. Marketing automation can help you segment your list, personalize messaging, schedule ongoing campaigns, and track results with real-time reporting. Holistic marketing is customer-focused, and marketing automation provides insights and tools to personalize your efforts based on customer needs.
Measure for Success
As a best practice, you should continually evaluate performance and make adjustments based on actual campaign metrics to ensure your desired outcomes are being met. Below are three digital marketing KPIs that are especially relevant to associations.
Conversions—new members, subscriptions, class enrollment, etc.
Expanded brand awareness—number of ad impressions, site visitors
Digital marketing offers a wealth of possibilities that support holistic marketing. With the right tools in place, you can segment your list and customize your message based on deep audience insights. You can track campaigns, messages, and offers as well as where each individual is in the buying cycle. Most importantly, you can access advanced data and analytics to guide your efforts today and next year. As a result, your audience enjoys a seamless customer experience—they get what they need when they need it. At the same time, you gain loyal followers who rally around your cause and sustain your organization into the future.
Digital marketing offers endless possibilities to get your messages in front of members and prospects. It’s tempting to jump on the latest trend, platform, or technique to cast a wide net. The result, however, can be a hodgepodge of offers and images that don’t support your core value proposition and don’t speak to individual customer journeys. Poor ROI and low engagement are the inevitable outcomes with this approach.
A better idea is to take a holistic approach to your digital marketing. Holistic marketing looks at the big picture of your brand and how all the pieces work together. It inspires and engages your audience through consistent, unified messaging that meets people where they are in the buying cycle. Holistic digital marketing will tell you where to focus your online efforts to maximize your resources, budget, and outcomes. Here’s how to get started.
Take inventory of your brand ecosystem
Before you can take a holistic approach to any marketing—digital or otherwise—you must take inventory of all aspects of your brand. Consider your digital platforms, such as your website and social media feeds. Add in your organization’s assets, like your events and membership. You will also need to consider your audience and segments as well as your budget and the timing of your initiatives.
Establish Objectives and KPIs
Before you ever brainstorm a campaign, establish objectives and KPIs to measure progress. These will help you know where to focus your energy and budget. In addition to your attendance, membership, and retention goals, your digital marketing objectives might include click-though rates, reach, impressions, and conversions (ex: downloads, purchases, form submissions).
Analyze Past Performance
Take a look at your past digital marketing initiatives and try to extract key insights. Was there a particular offer or message that resonated with your audience? Did a specific platform gain more traffic than others? Which information piece was downloaded most? Were there any flops? Knowing where you’ve been can help you determine where to go next. Quantify results whenever possible (ex: cost per click, lead, or conversion).
Examine Your Audience
Next, take an in-depth look at your audience. Besides the standard audience analysis (who are they, what do they care about?), holistic digital marketing requires a few additional questions.
How do people access your content and messages? (ex: mobile vs. social, Explorer vs. Chrome)
Which social media platforms do they prefer?
What communication formats do they prefer? (ex: email, social, SMS, direct mail)
What are they actually reading? (ex: blogs, whitepapers, microsites, event info)
What insights can you gain from available data? (ex: age, geography, demographics, member/non-member, etc.)
Give the People What They Want
Tailor your efforts based on the answers to these questions. If your audience prefers a mobile experience, your website design must be responsive and optimized for mobile users. If they spend more time on Facebook than Twitter, don’t worry about advertising on Twitter. If they convert more often over email, allocate additional resources to email.
Optimize Your Budget and Timing
Choose digital strategies based on how you can best move people along their customer journeys within your available budget. Time your initiatives with the buying cycle as well as your organization’s calendar and other industry events (ex: conferences, course offerings, changing regulations, membership renewal deadlines).
Maintain Consistency
Whichever strategies you settle on, keep in mind that holistic marketing is a 360-degree approach to reaching your audience. Its success depends on consistency online and off. To build trust and recognition among your base, your digital assets should match your real-world assets—not only in look and feel but in voice and personality as well.
Monitor Performance
Track KPIs over time to gauge the success of your digital initiatives and timing. Did you meet your goals and objectives? Make adjustments as needed—in real time if possible, or use your findings as benchmarks for next year.
Holistic digital marketing makes it possible to reach your audience with the right content on the right channel at the right time. It helps you get the most out of your budget while minimizing staff time and resources. What does that look like in practical terms? Tune in next week for Holistic Digital Marketing Part 2: Platforms and Tools.
Imagine how effective your marketing would be if all your channels worked seamlessly together—reinforcing your core brand message and promoting key campaigns to engage and inspire your audience. A holistic marketing strategy can achieve this precision. It thinks through each aspect of your marketing and figures out how all the pieces work together. As a result, you’ll provide a meaningful, consistent member experience that rallies people to your organization, drives engagement, and ensures a loyal long-term following.
4 Components of Holistic Marketing
Effective holistic marketing includes four essential components to help you see the big picture of your brand: relationships, integration of all brand touch points, your internal team, and marketing performance.
Relationship marketing
Given the overwhelming amount of marketing noise your members and prospects face every day, you need more than a slick website or a great offer to win their trust and loyalty. Relationship marketing helps you build meaningful engagement with current members and establish rapport with prospects. It requires you to reach people where they are and provide relevant info, connections, and tools that will meet their individual goals and challenges. Sure, this takes time and effort, but the payoff can be huge.
Cultivate relationships and people will join, attend, and engage because they’re internally compelled and inspired to do so—not because you’ve pushed them or “sold” them on anything. Connect with people on multiple levels: as individuals, based on what they do, continuously over time, directed towards an outcome, everywhere they are (marketing mix). Do this and you will have a steady supply of brand ambassadors who roll up their sleeves to further your industry and organization.
Integrated marketing
Most people aren’t ready to join your association the first time they hear about you. They need time to get to know you, explore your offerings, and understand your value. Individuals undergo a journey from awareness, to attending your events, to joining as a member. Eventually, they might also become loyal long-term followers.
Integrated marketing means giving members and prospects what they need when they need it to continue on their customer journey. Integrated marketing is about more than just splashing the same slogan, identity, and colors on every marketing channel. It weaves a coherent story through everything the brand does. No matter where someone encounters your organization or where they are in their customer journey, they should get the same seamless brand experience and the same authentic brand story.
To achieve integrated marketing, align your message, communication, and brand images across all marketing channels—online and off. Use marketing automation technology to facilitate this process and to create a cohesive marketing plan instead of silos.
Internal marketing
Internal marketing means all departments within your organization are aware of the marketing plan, work to support it, and have access to spreadsheets, calendars, communications, timelines, and budget. Everyone on your internal team must understand your overall vision as well as your individual promotions, standard messages, and current offers. Your team should be deeply familiar with the full range of your offerings and how members benefit from each one.
When your whole team knows the big picture and works toward a common goal, everyone wins. Your members and prospects get a consistent brand experience that meets their needs, and you save time and money by streamlining your efforts.
Performance marketing
To know what’s working you must track marketing performance and measure progress toward your goals. Key performance indicators are measurable values that show you how effectively your association is achieving key objectives. Establish KPIs and measure campaign performance to inform next steps, make better decisions, overcome challenges, and achieve your overall mission. KPIs maximize your budget and staff resources while generating better results. They help you use real-time data to make smart decisions for your marketing and your long-term sustainability.
Establish your goals first. Then assign objectives and KPIs. Once you define these parameters, you can begin brainstorming the individual strategies and campaigns that will propel your organization forward.
Why do you need holistic marketing?
With holistic marketing, you can go beyond simply promoting your organization and your offerings. You can rally your base to join together, form a movement, and further your mission. Holistic marketing is a surefire way to inspire and compel people—rather than push them or convince them. While it takes a little more work up front, over the long haul you’ll have a much easier time meeting registration, membership, and retention goals. As an added benefit, you’ll save time and money by integrating your efforts and streamlining your internal processes.
“People don’t do anything unless they’re inspired. But once they are inspired there is almost nothing they will not do.”
Are you struggling to attract millennials? Are you stuck on the membership acquisition and retention roller coaster? Are you unable to get out of “reaction” mode when the latest marketing tool or social media platform comes along?
If you answered yes to any of these questions it comes from the failure to spark inspiration in your members. Inspiration is what helps associations grow, thrive, and changes lives.
From the very beginning we have said that people need to be inspired to act. Surely though, there was more to this than a gut feeling. Could there be a science behind inspiration? Data? A meaningful and agreed-upon way to define this seemingly unknowable abstraction? We took a step back and realized that we needed a deeper understanding of what moves people. We set out to understand it—not just at the level of the heart, but scientifically.
Inspiration is a concept that floats around in space, finds its way into lines of poetry, buddies around with muses and supernatural beings, and is plastered all over social media. But what does it truly mean to inspire, or to be inspired? What do associations need to do to inspire members? And what do inspired members do that non-inspired members don’t do?
We took on these questions with purpose and focus. And we found answers.
Inspiration is not unknowable. It is quite knowable. It’s replicable. It’s scalable. And it is science. In our findings, we discovered that there are certain things that MUST be in place for inspiration to occur, and there are certain ways that inspiration actually moves people toward things. We understand why those millennials aren’t interested, why associations can’t get themselves off the rollercoaster, and why they spin their wheels with their marketing efforts.
When people are inspired, they take action, they get things done, they connect and come together—not because you convince them or push them or pull them, but because they just can’t help themselves. They’re internally compelled to make things happen. This is the “almost nothing they will not do” stage. And it’s far more powerful than any ho hum marketing piece or sales pitch can achieve for your organization. Inspired members are unstoppable. They go out of their way to help your organization achieve goals and pursue new horizons. They spread the word about the great work you do. They feel fulfilled while they actively work to fulfill your mission. Spark the fires of inspiration and the possibilities are endless. Fail to inspire your base, and your organization can not thrive.
We realize these things, and this is the crux of what you need to understand: Your marketing has a big job to do. It must harness the specific things research shows are needed for inspiration to happen. It must rally your base and connect people—to make a greater impact for long-term sustainability. INSPIRATION is how you get off the roller coaster. INSPIRATION is how you bring in the next generation and continue to change lives.
If we were fierce in our pursuit of inspiration before, now we are positively ferocious. Our rallying cry is, “Hell Yeah!” Let’s go find out what your members and your organization are capable of.
KPIs, or key performance indicators, can help you track the success of your event, marketing, and organization so you can make smart decisions to reach your goals. They can also help you identify gaps and make improvements as you go. The trouble is, there are lots of potential metrics to track, and not all of them are truly meaningful indicators of performance. Tracking the wrong metrics can lead to you to make uniformed decisions or worse—misinformed decisions. How do you know where to focus your attention?
Here are a dozen examples of KPIs especially suited for associations that hold events.
Use these as inspiration, but keep in mind your KPIs must be aligned with the specific goals of your event and your organization.
1. ROI:
Revenue from registrations, revenue from sponsors, total costs and cost per attendee
Why it matters: At the end of the day, your event and organization must be financially sustainable if your mission is to continue.
2. Event satisfaction:
Feedback from after-event surveys, repeat guests, how many signed up vs. actually showed up, first-time attendees
Why it matters: If the KPIs show that your attendees are overwhelmingly satisfied with your event, perhaps you need to focus your efforts on raising awareness through marketing. If your attendees were dissatisfied, you might focus on improving your event experience before turning to promotion.
3. Engagement:
Attendance numbers; number of people who registered but didn’t show; social media mentions, comments, and clicks
Why it matters: Engagement is often viewed as a subjective concept. These KPIs provide an objective way to measure member and attendee engagement using quantifiable data points.
4. Web traffic:
Number of visitors, which channels they came from, search queries
Why it matters: Monitoring web traffic provides baseline information about the size of your audience, where they spend time online, and what they care about. This can help you decide what content to feature on your site and where to promote it.
5. New leads:
Number of new leads (not just new contacts) and each lead’s source
Why it matters: See where your leads come from so you know where to invest more of your time, effort, and budget (and where not to).
6. Visitor-to-lead ratio:
Compare number of site visitors to number of new leads
Why it matters: If you get lots of visitors but they don’t take any action, that’s a sign that your visitors didn’t find what they’re looking for. It could mean your Facebook ads are targeting the wrong audience, for example. It could also mean your website isn’t compelling enough, doesn’t provide key information, or is difficult to navigate.
7. Landing page conversion rate:
Percentage of people who come to a landing page that complete a form
Why it matters: People who arrived at your landing page were compelled to click on something to get there. If too many leave without taking further action, it could be a sign your offer isn’t strong enough or isn’t aligned with their customer journey (or you don’t have an offer at all). It could also indicate a lack of trust—they might be worried about how you will use their contact info.
8. Lead-to-member/registration ratio:
How many leads you generate compared to how many join your organization/register for your event
Why it matters: If you generate lots of leads but acquire very few members, it could be an indication that your marketing offer was too general (ex: a free promotional item vs. a free whitepaper). For events, this could be a sign that you haven’t proven the ROI of attending.
9. Email metrics:
Delivery, open, click, and unsubscribe rates; number of subscribers
Why it matters: Email metrics help you to gauge whether your messaging and offers resonate with your targets.
10. Blog metrics:
Number of visitors to your blog, click-through rate, number of subscribers to your blog
Why it matters: If your blog traffic is light, your content isn’t resonating with your audience. Click-throughs can tell you what people were interested in to guide future content and offers.
11. Search engine optimization:
Backlinks, keyword ranking
Why it matters: SEO is especially important to find new prospects. The higher your keywords rank, the more likely you are to get organic traffic.
12. Diversity:
Age, gender, ethnicity, bilingual
Why it matters: If you want more millennials, for example, you need to monitor your audience makeup today and as you launch new campaigns and event offerings. Explore the relationship between attendee diversity and your campaigns to see what resonates with people of various backgrounds.
While you might not monitor all 12 of these KPIs, you will need to track more than just one or two. KPIs are most meaningful when considered in combination with one another and as part of your larger brand strategy. For example, you can look at attendance numbers in light of your web traffic, landing page conversions, and email performance to find where people are dropping out of your sales funnel.
Without well-defined goals and corresponding KPIs, you can only guess at the success of your marketing campaigns, your events, and your organization’s progress toward your mission. With KPIs, you can use quantifiable data to make informed decisions that fuel attendance, engagement, and long-term sustainability.
Do you know if your event marketing is working? Which promotions were the most successful? Is your association reaching attendance, member acquisition, and retention goals? Are you making real, quantifiable progress toward your mission?
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are measurable values that show you how effectively your association is achieving key objectives. They can help you gauge what’s working and what’s not so you can make adjustments along the way. Tracking KPIs allows you to use real-time data to make smart decisions for your marketing and your long-term sustainability.
How to Use KPIs
KPIs can help your association focus on common goals and ensure those goals stay aligned within your association. The first step is to determine what your goals are. Next, choose KPIs for each one so you can measure progress. For example, associations who hold events often focus on improving lead generation, event registration, brand awareness, and member engagement. If we match each of these goals with KPIs, it might look something like this:
Best Practices for KPIs
How do you determine which metrics are meaningful for your organization? Effective KPIs align with the long-term mission of your organization, not just this year’s event. They should be measurable and have easily obtainable data that is reliable and accurate. Mostly importantly, they should be actionable, allowing you to make changes to your event, marketing, member offerings, and operations based on the actual needs and behaviors of your audience.
Be realistic when choosing your KPIs. If it’s expensive or difficult to monitor a KPI, then you likely won’t be able to track it over the long term. If your KPI is not clearly defined, you also won’t be able to extract meaningful data. If you can’t act on the information, there is little point in tracking it.
KPIs for Events
Effective KPIs for your event marketing and your event itself might include member acquisition and attendance numbers, social media traffic, or the number of people who requested follow-up information. The most insightful KPIs are dynamic. They consider multiple metrics within the context of your larger brand ecosystem. For example, you already measure event attendance. However, comparing the number of people who registered to the number of people who actually attended might identify a gap in your marketing. Looking at when all these individuals registered could lead to additional insights. (We’ll cover 12 common KPIs for event marketers in our next blog post.)
Track Your KPIs
Once you’ve established your goals and corresponding KPIs, you will need a way to track these with a real-time reporting tool. A software platform can help you manage KPIs from a simple dashboard. It can also help you track campaign performance, create reports, and make adjustments to your marketing to ensure your reach your goals. Plan to review KPIs with stakeholders on a weekly basis. Stay nimble, and be prepared to make changes based on what you learn.
Without established KPIs you can only guess at the effectiveness of your marketing and overall organizational strategy. With KPIs you can know definitively what’s working and what’s not based on quantifiable data. You’ll know exactly where to invest in your event and your organization to ensure long-term sustainability.
So your event had great attendance and you saw a surge in membership. Feedback was positive and you feel triumphant. Great! Now what? What happens next is sometimes…well, not much.
After the excitement of your event, it’s easy for people go back to their regular routines and forget about your organization. The crickets start to chirp on your social media feeds. Email opens and click-through rates drop. People just aren’t engaging like they did in person.
If you can keep the momentum going, people will continue to engage, connect, and work toward your mission over the long haul. Even better, it will be easier to get them to register for your event next year. How can you do all this? You need a comprehensive engagement plan.
Here are Five strategies to maintain the community, camaraderie, inspiration, and engagement of your event all year long.
Use marketing automation
The Association Engagement Survey with Access Intelligence suggests that your event attendees are the most engaged people in your organization. These individuals are already convinced of your value and will need less attention throughout the year. New prospects, by contrast, will need to be informed, inspired, and reassured before they take action. To communicate effectively with all your audience segments, you’ll need to personalize your campaigns and align them with the buying cycle. A marketing automation platform, such as Informz, can help. Informz lets you create, schedule, personalize, and track your campaigns to ensure timely, relevant communications before, during, and after your event.
Get more face time
Supplement annual national events with smaller regional affairs throughout the year. This might mean you host mini conferences or workshops in a few centrally located cities. It could also be much simpler. Consider sponsoring a team for a 5k or organizing a neighborhood cleanup day. These simple events can facilitate powerful connections among members by bringing them together for a common cause. If all else fails, organize regional happy hours for some liquid inspiration. More face time equals more opportunities to connect and engage.
Build online communities
It’s not enough to have a social media presence. People need to interact—with each other and with your organization. Post a mix of original content, quizzes, motion graphics, videos, live streaming, affiliate articles and information, and promotional ads. But don’t stop there. Pose open-ended questions to encourage conversation, and be sure to respond when people ask you questions. In addition to social media, consider other year-round networking opportunities using your event’s mobile app, a LISTSERVE, Basecamp, or other platforms that facilitate connection and idea-sharing.
Recruit brand ambassadors
Gather your pilgrims, your most devoted members and attendees. Ask them to promote your event and your year-round offerings in their own circles, online and off. Give them an opportunity to share their experiences through member-curated stories and testimonials. Create a referral program with incentives to attract likeminded colleagues. For example, you could craft an email that’s meant to be forwarded to a friend. Offer a free online workshop for joining as a new member and give one to the member who made the referral. Your brand ambassadors put their reputation on the line by promoting your organization. Reward their loyalty with recognition and the occasional goody.
Encourage audience participation
People feel more engaged in your organization and your event if they have a say in the decision-making process. Ask for input on anything from the event theme to the food you serve and the music you play. Take a poll on which speakers to invite. Ask for volunteers to serve on committees or teach sessions. The more deeply people get involved, the more likely they are to become brand ambassadors and repeat attendees.
For year-round engagement, people need to hear from you on a regular basis. But that’s just the first step. They need personalized communications and face-to-face opportunities that offer value, reinforce connections, maintain the momentum of your event, and enable their goals. Go beyond an event marketing strategy. Sustain your organization 365 days a year with a comprehensive engagement plan.
According to the Email Statistics Report, the average person received 90 emails per day in 2016. That’s a lot of clutter to cut through if you’re a marketer. To get attention and to maximize your ROI, you need to go beyond impersonal e-blasts and one-size-fits-all marketing. A better strategy is to take cues from your audience and your data to craft purposeful content for a range of digital touch points. Then optimize your efforts through automation and a CRM platform. When all the elements of your digital marketing environment come together, that’s when the magic happens. You’ll increase engagement and move more of your base along their journey toward event attendance and membership.
The member journey
Most people aren’t ready to attend your event or join your organization the first time they hear about you. They need time to get to know you, explore your offerings, and understand your value. Individuals will undergo a journey from awareness, to attending your events, to joining as a member. Eventually, they might also become loyal long-term followers and brand ambassadors. But how much time do they need? What exactly do they need to know? And when do they need to know it? Answering these questions requires a solid grasp of the entire digital marketing environment. This includes in-depth audience knowledge as well as integrated brand touch points.
Meet them where they are
A solid digital marketing strategy begins by knowing your audience—not just their demographics or purchase history but characteristics and behaviors that help you speak to them. Start by assigning archetypes, or personas, to your audience segments. Archetypes are defined categories centered around value and purpose. You can also segment your audience based on known behaviors, such as members, non-members, veteran attendees, or new attendees. Also consider where individuals are in the buying cycle and how much they already know about your association. All this information helps you tailor your messaging and tactics so you can provide timely, relevant marketing communication that engages your base.
Bring all brand touch points together
Digital brand touch points include stories, videos, retargeting, emails,ebooks, white papers, landing pages, and more. Your audience might encounter any or all of these items depending on where they are in their journey. It’s important to present a unified look and feel in all your branding as well as complementary messaging. It’s also critical to include a mix of content types to cater to various communication preferences. But how do you know which tactics to launch, to whom, and when?
Why you need marketing automation
Marketing automation allows your audience to tell you what they need. To get started, you create several defined communication strategies, called workflows, based on your archetypes, audience segments, and any data you’ve gathered. Once you set your workflows in motion, your audience behaviors trigger the next steps. One example would be an individual who sees your Facebook ad then clicks to download your white paper on business finances. This behavior then triggers an email promoting the finance track at your annual conference. If this person decides to register for your event, they will receive information about other offerings at the conference. If they don’t register within a week of your first email, they automatically receive a discount code in a follow-up email. The more that people interact with your brand touch points, the more you learn, and the more likely it is that you can continually deliver communications they find valuable. The result? A recent study suggests that using marketing automation to nurture your prospects could result in a 451% increase in qualified leads.
Tracking success
It’s important to track campaign results, examine key performance indicators, and understand your data. By leveraging real-time pre-event marketing data, you can use relevant member or prospect behaviors to trigger lead scoring and follow-up activities for cross-selling and upselling. Combining data-driven insights with automation technology will help you personalize their journey toward attendance and membership—and you’ll see increases in both as a result. Use a customer relationship management program to monitor your data and effectively track and score leads. If you can’t monitor results, you won’t be able to calculate campaign ROI and you won’t know what’s working (and what’s not). Marketing automation isn’t something you can set and forget. You must keep an eye on the data and adjust your workflows based on actual behaviors.
Up your marketing game
In today’s world of flooded inboxes and information overload, you need to up your marketing game if you want sustainable membership and event attendance. Improve your marketing using automation and integrated brand touch points to guide more people through their customer journeys. Rottman Creative can help you cut through the clutter and drive event attendance with purposeful digital marketing. Contact us today to learn more about marketing automation.
Strategic event marketing is about inspiring and connecting potential attendees. It goes beyond facts and “stuff”—all that networking, education, and certification you offer. People need to understand your event’s value on an emotional level. They must see a measurable return on the time, money, and effort they invest to attend. This is all within your grasp if you have a solid marketing strategy.
Use these four pillars as the foundation of a purposeful marketing strategy that drives event attendance and member engagement.
Product (your event)
Your event is a product, and it should be marketed as such. There is a buying cycle, and your marketing must support it. You need to inform the unaware, inspire the interested, and reassure the intent to guide prospects along a journey toward registration and membership.
Like any good product marketing, your messaging should focus not on the features (sessions, experts, certifications) but on the benefits your attendees will realize.
How will their lives be better or easier by attending your event?
What goals do they have that your event will enable?
What pain points will it take away?
What’s the ROI they can expect from attending?
These are emotional issues for your audience, so to be effective you need to have empathy for their situation—no matter where they are in the buying cycle. For example, someone who is brand new to the industry might be feeling in over their head. They lack experience and expertise. They’re hungry for resources and connections. To effectively reach this individual, you must first raise awareness that you exist. Next, demonstrate your offerings and value through compelling storytelling. Lastly, reassure them that they’ve come to the right place—a place where like-minded people collaborate to solve their most pressing issues.
If you host an annual event, it’s easy to keep churning out the same marketing year after year. To really inspire and connect people, you must take a fresh approach. Every year is a new product launch. Every year you must ask yourself how you can align your marketing with the buying cycle to address current audience needs and emotions.
Story
Neuroscience tells us that stories have the power to inspire and connect your attendees. Storytelling goes beyond facts and logic to engage the limbic brain, where most of our decisions are made. To truly resonate with prospects, branded attendee stories must show new possibilities and enable goals. They must address pain points, challenges, and questions attendees might have. To find juicy story content, identify a handful of people willing to give you an hour or two of their time. Choose a mix of new members, veteran attendees, and maybe even a curmudgeon who wasn’t so quick to see your value. Come prepared with questions, but don’t be afraid to venture off the map. Sometimes your best stories come from unscripted conversations.
Once you have enough information, craft the entire story. You can always use shorter excerpts depending on your platform. For effective stories that inherently increase connection among readers, follow the universal story structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. (Read more about The Anatomy of a Story and see an example.) The best stories create a sense of urgency with the reader to incite the desired action.
Sustainability
For your event—and your organization itself—to be sustainable, you need to create pilgrims, not tourists. Pilgrims engage. They attend your event year after year because they are internally compelled to be there. Tourists, by contrast, come to look. They leave without contributing and do not return. Again thinking of your event as a product, it’s much easier to up-sell, cross sell, or get repeat business from an existing customer. If you can continually inspire your members and attendees, you’ll have a much easier time filling seats year after year. As a bonus, your devoted pilgrims will be more likely to engage.
Strategies for driving sustainability:
Craft timely, emotionally engaging marketing communications aligned with the buying cycle. Use marketing automation to ensure you are most responsive to prospect/attendee needs based on actual behaviors.
Provide exclusive event offerings people can’t get anywhere else (ex: face time with experts, hands-on learning, exclusive products, event-only specials).
Create meaningful event activities that allow inspiration and creativity through in-person connection and collaboration (ex: social outings, informal networking spaces, roundtable discussions, business incubators).
Provide unique promotional items with an engagement component (ex: Encourage attendees to share an image on social media wearing your association’s branded clothing).
Fear
Besides the cost to attend, fear is why people do not register for your event. Pre-event stressors and on-site stressors prevent people from registering altogether, or they prevent people from fully engaging while there. You must prove that the benefits of your event are greater than people’s fears. According to the Attendee Research Report, 1 in 4 attendees thought their last event was stressful. To address stressors and encourage people to overcome them, you need to be empathic in your communication efforts. To do that, you must first understand their fears.
Pre-event stressors include time away from work and family, cost and hassle of travel, and even what to wear. On-site stressors might be the crowds, not knowing anyone, or selecting which sessions to attend. General fear of the unknown can put a serious dent in your attendance numbers.
Focus on the fears most relevant to your audience, and take steps to address them.
A few suggestions for overcoming fears and proving value:
First-time attendee breakfast or mentor program
Early bird discounts, giveaways, or special drawings to offset costs
Clear communications about how to get to the event and where to stay, including any travel promotions
Detailed event schedule and layout to help attendees navigate your event and take full advantage of all offerings
Online forum for people to connect ahead of time
Pre-event social media conversations or webinars to break the ice between attendees and your organization
Suggested dress code (ex: “Our attendees typically wear business casual attire.”)
A mix of structured and informal networking events to cater to introverts and extroverts
ROI toolkit to help attendees weigh the costs versus the benefits
It’s not enough to host a great event.
You need a comprehensive strategy to inspire and drive people to attend. Plus, you need them to come back next year. Use these four pillars as a guide to identify and close the gaps in your current marketing strategy.
In a world of content overload, motion graphics cut through the clutter with bite-sized content that grabs attention, evokes emotions, and incites action.
So why aren’t you using them? The Association Audience and Member Engagement Study indicated 84% of associations don’t use motion graphics. If you want to improve attendance, membership, and engagement—as well as SEO, web traffic, and social media reach—it’s time to try new tactics. Motion graphics are proven to generate outcomes without draining all your time and resources.
What are motion graphics?
Motion graphics are animations or static images brought to life through design to create the illusion of motion. They’re often paired with audio to form engaging multimedia clips.
Compared to static text or standard presentations, motion graphics give your audience a better understanding of your association and your brand. They’re inherently more engaging than other formats because they “show” instead of “tell.” Motion graphics allow you to present complex information in a short, simple way. An added advantage is that they’re easily sharable, not just on the web and social media but at your events and in apps.
Cost effective
“It’s hard to recruit new audiences with a very limited budget,” noted one association director in the engagement survey. With motion graphics you don’t need expensive equipment and camera crews. You just need a motion graphics designer, who can use your existing brand images and collateral to craft original animations. Because the ideal length of a motion graphic is just a few seconds, these projects are less complex and time-consuming to execute than videos. As a result, they tend to be more affordable than video.
Broad appeal
“One of our pain points is creating content that attracts a wide variety of audiences,” noted another survey respondent. A robust marketing plan must include a range of tactics to engage your audience segments and inspire them to take action. Adding a motion graphics component to your plan is a great way to mix up your content delivery and reinforce brand touch points.
Best practices
Given viewers’ short attention spans, it’s essential to capture attention and deliver your message as fast as possible. Just how fast? According to Facebook, only 65% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will continue watching for at least 10 seconds. Only 45% continue watching for 30 seconds. A study from Locowise determined viewers watch videos for about 18 seconds on average, even though the average video length is nearly a minute. It’s vital to include the most important information within the first three seconds of your motion graphic if you want to keep your audience captivated.
Expand your efforts
Nearly 90% of associations surveyed in the Association Audience and Member Engagement Study indicated some interest in using more video in their marketing. However, many stated they lack the resources to expand their efforts. Motion graphics can be an simple, effective solution at a fraction of the effort and time of video.
Ready to engage your audience with motion graphics? Contact Rottman Creative today to add this compelling tactic to your marketing plan.
If you struggle with event attendance and membership acquisition, chances are the problem isn’t your organization, your member benefits, or your event itself. The issue is that not enough people know your VALUE. They need to fully comprehend what’s in it for them, or they won’t be moved to act. While there are lots of ways to communicate value to your target audience, there is only one that’s proven effective through brain research: STORYTELLING.
Why storytelling?
Humans make decisions in the limbic system. That’s the emotional part of the brain, not the logical one. That means if you want people to register for your event or join you as a member, you need to appeal to their emotions. Facts and logic won’t cut it. Storytelling that includes rich, sensory details actively engages the limbic system and inspires people to take action because they feel compelled to do so.
The proven effectiveness of storytelling should make it a no-brainer when it comes to event marketing. But, most organizations aren’t taking advantage of this format. According to the Association Audience and Member Engagement Study, only 33 percent of associations use storytelling to promote events.
Not coincidentally, the study participants cited numerous challenges related to demonstrating event value and retaining members. “We struggle with conveying a clear value of networking,” said one. “We need to create a distinct reason for our attendees to join once they agree to attend,” said another. Answers ranged from communicating value to capturing attention and encouraging engagement—all things storytelling can help with.
How to start telling stories
Your members are a gold mine of stories. You just need to do a little digging. First, identify a handful of people who might be willing to give you an hour or two of their time. Choose a mix of new members, veteran attendees, cheerleaders, and maybe even a curmudgeon who wasn’t so quick to see your value. Next, come prepared with questions, but don’t be afraid to venture off the map. Sometimes your best stories come from unscripted conversations. It’s a good idea to record the interview so you don’t miss any juicy details.
10 questions for better member stories
Here are 10 questions to get you started telling curated member stories. Be sure to tailor questions slightly depending on whom you’re interviewing. For example, a veteran attendee may need slightly different prompts than a first-timer.
What’s your situation? Tell me about yourself and your business.
What are your biggest challenges and concerns?
How long have you been a member, and how did you first hear about the association?
Why do you go to the event? Variations: Why are you going for the first time? Why do you go to this event on a regular basis?
What do you do to prepare for the event?
How do you justify time away from your business? Variation: How do you describe the benefits vs. the cost of attending?
Who do you meet there and how do you meet them?
Do you have any advice for other attendees? For first-time attendees? For veteran attendees?
How do you benefit from the event? Variations: What do you take away from the event—literally and figuratively? What’s your biggest takeaway?
Is there anything else you would like to share?
How to structure your story
Once you have a repository of information, write out the entire story. (You can always shorten it to fit your marketing needs later.) A good story follows a traditional structure. It has characters, a setting, rising action and conflict, a climax, falling action, and an ending. Within this framework, your stories should show members you understand their pain points and that you have solutions and resources to resolve their challenges.
Marketing tactics
Authentic stories from real people resonate in a world of information overload. Stories inspire and connect your base. But storytelling itself isn’t a marketing tactic. It must be aligned with digital media to help you reach membership and attendance goals. Just a few ideas for incorporating storytelling into your marketing mix: blogs, automated emails, micro sites, videos, Facebook Canvas, and Facebook Ads.
Einstein defined insanity as, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Chances are you’ve been using the same strategies over and over again while membership and attendance stay flat or, worse, decline. If you’re among the majority of event marketers not using storytelling, now is the time to start. If you already use storytelling, perhaps it’s time to infuse some life into it with richer sensory details, more colorful characters, and a complementary digital strategy.
Don’t let another year go by with ho hum marketing results. Contact Rottman Creative to curate your member stories and turn them into dynamic digital marketing that drives membership, attendance, and engagement.
Facebook is the ideal platform for event marketers. You can use it to find new prospects and drive attendance among existing members. You can build excitement around your conference and inform attendees of speakers, special events, and exclusive offerings. In short, promoting your event on Facebook will get more people in your door AND those people will be primed and ready to engage. Thanks to smart customizations and audience targeting, you can deliver personalized marketing messages aligned with your buying cycle. Even if you’ve never tried online advertising before, these five steps will have you running effective campaigns in short order.
Step 1: Use Facebook Ads to retarget known users and find new prospects
Facebook Ads are a great way to reach your audience outside of email and direct mail. They offer efficient personalization not possible with these other channels. To get started, use the Power Editor. Consult Facebook’s library of tutorials, including videos, to help you take full advantage of all the platform’s features.
Once you get the hang of things, you can use Facebook Ads to align your communications with your buying cycle. For example, people who already registered for your event don’t need to see ads that ask them to register. Instead, you could show them an ad about your keynote speaker. You can introduce your organization and event people who don’t know who you are. You can also retarget visitors to your website or Facebook page, to reassure their interest and encourage them to register.
Step 2: Install the Facebook pixel on your website, create custom audiences
The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that helps you track and target visitors to your website. Don’t skip this step! The pixel makes laser-focused ad campaigns possible.
To install the Facebook pixel, log on to your Facebook page and navigate to the Ads Manager tab. Click the button that says “create pixel.” Once your pixel is generated, paste that snippet of code in the
tags on each page of your website—including any “thank you” pages that appear upon form submission.
Create custom audiences
Four types of custom audiences help you reach the people most likely to attend your event:
Customer file—upload your existing email list, which Facebook will match to user profiles
Website traffic—target people who have visited your website or specific pages (based on insights from the pixel)
App activity—reach out to people who have taken specific actions on your app
Engagement on Facebook—connect with people who have already interacted with you on FB
Use these audiences to craft highly personalized ads based on your buying cycle. You can also create lookalike audiences from your custom audiences. That means you can ask Facebook to find people with similar interests and behaviors who might be interested in your event. Lookalike audiences are a quick, easy, and cost-effective way to grow your base and drive attendance.
Custom conversions
A feature called “custom conversions” helps you target prospects who have already taken some action. That might be someone who signed up for your newsletter and was redirected to a “thank you” page (i.e. a conversion). You can optimize your ads for this conversion, so Facebook will show your ad to people most likely to convert again.
Step 3: Make a Facebook page for your event, or create an event through your main page
A special event page ensures that members and prospects focus directly on your event and its offerings—instead of getting distracted by other content. You can also create an official Facebook event from your main page for easy promotion.
For either option, follow these best practices:
Choose a high-quality photo in line with the rest of your branding
Use a clear, descriptive but short event name
Add specifics on location, date, and time
Include the ability to register (Facebook calls this “Buy Tickets”)
Add any FB page you manage as a co-host to expand who sees your event details. You can also add vendor and speaker pages so your event will appear on their calendars also.
Include keywords to help people find you
Write a brief description that explains the value of your event
Step 4: Create a content calendar
Plan your Facebook content to help you stay focused. Include a mix of blogs, images, videos, status updates, opinion polls, and a few outright promotional messages. Craft posts about individual speakers , workshops, or special events to get your fans excited. Ask open-ended questions to encourage dialogue and feedback. Post regularly for best results. Don’t forget that your Facebook presence is an extension of your brand, so your messaging, images, and offers should be consistent with the rest of your branding and marketing.
Step 5: Monitor and evaluate your efforts
Facebook offers infinite possibilities for customizing your messaging, images, offers, and formats. But none of that matters if you don’t track what works and what doesn’t. Use the platform’s reporting features to see how many people saw your ads, how many took action, and what actions they took. Edit or turn off ads that aren’t performing to your expectations. Consider increasing your budget on ads doing exceptionally well. Use what you learn about your audience’s likes and dislikes to adjust images, messaging, and offers going forward.
Don’t miss out on attendees and new members
If you’re not marketing your event on Facebook, quite simply, you’re missing out. Your members and prospects are already there, hanging out and hungry for engaging content and offers. Leverage this smart platform to reach your base, find new prospects, and drive event attendance.
Facebook Canvas is an immersive storytelling platform you can use to communicate with your base, drive event attendance, and build brand loyalty. It’s more than an ad; it’s an interactive marketing experience. Canvas is simple to set up, but before you start placing buttons and adding images you need a plan. It’s a good idea to outline your key points and basic story line first.
The look and feel of your Canvas should be in line with the rest of your branding. This is especially important if you’re also running Facebook ads. All your online branding should match so users recognize you no matter where they encounter your brand.
Customize your story
The possibilities for customizing your Canvas are endless. You can select a range of styles and colors using easy drag-and-drop tools. Available components include button, photo, text block, video, and header. These can all be used more than once throughout your Canvas. A good strategy is to include a mix of content, high-quality images, and video to engage your users. As with any effective marketing piece, don’t forget clear calls to action. Keep things short and to the point so you don’t lose your audience. A general rule is to include only one or two key points in each Canvas. You can always create more than one for your event.
Create a custom audience
Once your Canvas is complete, you should create a custom audience in Facebook for people who have opened and/or clicked on any links in your Canvas. This allows for precisely targeting these individuals based on their interests and behaviors later on. Canvas is exclusively a mobile platform. That means when you set up your Canvas you will need to select “mobile only” in the ad set process.
Ideas for associations
This exciting new medium has endless potential for marketers. It is especially well suited for associations. Consider using Canvas to promote the following:
Curated member stories, to inspire attendees
ROI Toolkit, to prove the value of your event
Membership, with a sign-up form at the end
Overall conference, with a call to register at the end
Canvas allows you to go beyond traditional advertising formats to truly engage your base with compelling stories and relevant offers. It also helps you track user behavior so you can more precisely focus your marketing efforts going forward.
Navigating digital advertising platforms can be confusing and expensive. You might end up spending a lot of money and getting very few results in return. But online advertising also offers a huge opportunity to reach a specific audience with relevant messages and offers. For member organizations, that means discovering more potential members and event attendees. We recommend Facebook as the place to start for affordable online advertising that gets results.
Follow these five steps to ensure you see ROI on your Facebook marketing dollars.
1. You need a strategy.
Launching an ad and hoping you get overwhelmed with responses sounds great, but it’s unlikely to happen without a comprehensive marketing strategy. As with any good campaign, start by establishing the objective. What do you want to happen as a result of your efforts?
When it comes to digital advertising, consider one of these outcomes:
event attendance or membership
clicks to website or video views
conversions on your site
page post engagement
likes
app installs
brand awareness
local awareness
offers claimed
product sales
lead generation
Be specific and quantify your objective. How many more clicks do you want? How many new members do you need to sign up?
The next stage of your strategy is to select your ad set. We recommend using Facebook’s Power Editor over its Ads Manger for this step as well as the rest of your campaign. Here you’ll decide whom to target, how much you will spend, the timing of your campaign, where the ads will appear, and how they will be optimized. You can always make adjustments to these settings later on based on campaign performance.
Only after you’ve established your strategy, objective, and ad set should you proceed with creating visuals and messaging for the ads people will see.
2. Use segmented custom audiences
An especially useful feature of Facebook advertising is the ability to target individuals who are already on your contact list in addition to new prospects. To take advantage of this option, you will first need to install the Facebook Pixel on your website and upload your segmented email lists. This allows you to retarget ads to your site visitors as well as the people on your email lists. You can even create a custom audience for every page of your website.
Throughout the entire process you have the ability to customize ad sets based on budget, placement, timing, and optimization. You can also tailor your ad images and messaging based on your audience segments. All this adds up to precisely targeting known users and prospects with highly relevant content based on their actual interests and online behaviors.
3. Use custom conversions.
Facebook’s custom conversions help you target visitors to your website who ended up converting (filling out a form, registering for your event, making an inbound inquiry or purchase, etc). To use custom conversions, it is best to have a landing page directly on your site. Here’s an example:
If a user wants to sign up for your newsletter, they visit www.yoursite.com/newsletter. Once they submit their email address, they are redirected to another landing page saying, “Thanks for signing up.” That might be www.yoursite.com/newsletterthankyou. Because Facebook Pixel is already on your site, Facebook can optimize for this conversion when running your ads. It will target these users who have already interacted with your brand (and who we know are more likely to convert again in the future).
4. Don’t forget to test.
One of the great advantages of digital advertising is that you can make changes instantly based on performance. A good strategy is to A/B test images, video, and copy to dial in a winning combination. You can pause or revise ads that are underperforming or increase your budget on ads doing especially well.
Facebook has a range of features, such as image carousel or Canvas, that you can test to optimize your campaigns. For the best results, test only one item at a time. For example, use the same copy with two different images to see which image performs better. After a week, turn off the ad with less activity.
5. Review your stats.
Facebook advertising is not a “set it and forget it” tactic. It’s important to monitor your campaign statistics from BOTH Ads Manger and Power Editor. Ads Manager allows you to see key insights on performance, demographics, and placement. Power Editor provides more specific info on your click-though rates, or CTR, and the average cost per thousand impressions, or CPM. Once you evaluate campaigns using multiple data sets, you can make informed adjustments to boost performance going forward.
Why Facebook?
Compared to web retargeting, Facebook offers more affordable solutions and better results for associations to reach their audiences and convert users to members and attendees. Contact Rottman Creative today to get started using this platform.
Lots of associations focus on the numbers. How many members do we have? How many people attended our event? While a strong base of members and attendees is essential to your long-term sustainability, don’t overlook an even more important element: engagement.
If you’re rolling your eyes at what sounds like just another corporate buzz word, give us a moment. Engagement is a knowable, measurable component that can directly improve your event and your organization overall.
What is engagement?
True engagement includes two parts, involvement and commitment. When people are engaged at your event, it means they’re both mentally and physically present. They set aside their phones and their work to listen, connect, participate, and share ideas. Some will even volunteer, join committees, publish papers, present sessions, and host webinars. Engaged members further the life-changing work of your organization by getting involved and committing to your mission.
Chances are not all your members are fully engaged, and that’s okay. There are various defined levels of engagement, as you’ll see in the Engagement Path below. All levels are important to your event and your organization.
At the bottom of the Engagement Path are the Outliers, people who are aware of your organization and are following or observing your activities and communications. Reaching Outliers relies heavily on technology—web, email, and social media—which allows you to reach a broad base with a light touch. Little interaction or engagement take place at this level, but you are beginning the important work of raising awareness and reassuring interest.
At the top of the pyramid are the Agents, individuals whose personal and professional mission are aligned with your organization’s mission. Agents are compelled to connect and contribute to achieve breakthroughs and change lives. Proceeding up the pyramid requires more intense effort on your part, too. Communications take the form of personal connections, face-to-face interactions, and top-notch events. You reach a smaller group but forge higher-quality connections here. The farther up the pyramid you go, the more likely it is that you’re engaging members, driving brand loyalty, and creating Agents.
If you’re like most associations, the majority of your members fall somewhere in the middle, in the Tribe level. Tribe members might comment on your social media posts or attend an event or two. They follow your organization’s activities and communications, but they aren’t yet the loyal Agents you need to thrive. This middle ground is prime territory for increasing engagement.
How to fuel the transition with engagement marketing
You can transition members from the bottom or middle to the top of the Engagement Path by following the Engagement Marketing Cycle. This journey has three stages: elements of build awareness, manifestation of inspiration and transition to reassurance
Elements of build awareness: Identify your mission by focusing on the one thing of most value you need your audience to know. Develop a strategy that clearly communicates your value proposition. Spark inspiration and engagement by creating a unified brand experience.
Manifestation of inspiration: Launch segmented campaigns using storytelling and compelling triggers and targets to drive membership, attendance, and engagement. Focus on the buying cycle to decide who needs to hear from you and when. Deliver on your brand promise with relevant offers, a killer event, and year-round opportunities for members to connect and engage (ex: online forums, regional events). Follow up on member case stories and publish your successes to reinforce your value proposition.
Transition to Reassurance: Evaluate your initial campaigns and the level of engagement of your base. Be nimble and ready to make changes if necessary. You must reassure your audience that your organization and event will enable their goals and open them to new possibilities. After your event, identify what worked and what could be improved for next year.
When we combine the Engagement Path with the Engagement Marketing Cycle, it looks like this:
Increasing engagement doesn’t happen overnight. Each step is equally important and takes time to achieve. You’ll likely have a constant flow of members moving through all the levels at any given time. You’ll also find yourself starting the Engagement Marketing Cycle over again each year to drive membership and event attendance. The important thing is to keep working on moving individuals to an engaged state. That way you’ll always have a solid core of committed, involved individuals to sustain your organization.
Where to start? Take the Engagement Assessment to find out how your organization rates on the Engagement Scale. You’ll learn your Engagement Gang profile and next steps to transition your members from non-engaged to engaged. Click here to take the assessment now.
How can you increase membership and attendance? How can you fuel engagement at your events and throughout the year? When it comes to marketing, what really grabs attention and compels people to take action? Rottman Creative exists to answer these questions and more for member associations. We provide marketing solutions that drive attendance and customer engagement by increasing brand loyalty. Our strategies are based on research and neuroscience, and they generate measurable outcomes for our clients.
Our codified methodology is successful because it’s based on how the human brain works, not on the latest marketing fads. To add more firepower to your marketing, we also focus on the buying cycle to deliver the right messaging to the right audience segment at the right time. All our insights add up to increased attendance and as much as 23% increased engagement for member organizations.
Why engagement?
We know engagement is more than just “showing up.” It’s about more than attendees. You need members to set aside their phones and their everyday tasks so they can focus on your event and the value they can give to it and get from it. You need individuals who are compelled from within to take action, work together, and tackle the hard stuff that leads to success in your field. And you need everyone to come back next year and do it all over again. The sustainability of your organization depends on engagement.
Why neuroscience?
The way to achieve engagement isn’t by adding more programming, speakers, certifications, and other “stuff.” It turns out humans are hardwired to connect, and we feel engaged when we make high-quality connections. We also feel engaged through storytelling, not primarily through straightforward facts and information. The research tells us that human beings make decisions in the emotional center of the brain, not the logical one. By tapping into human nature and the latest neuroscience, Rottman Creative can more effectively target and engage your base.
TNT, triggers and targets
To move interested parties through your buying cycle—from being aware or interested to actually taking action—you need compelling triggers and targets in your marketing communications. Triggers might be your products, events, and special offers. Targets include whatever you want your members to do, like register for an event or make a purchase. We’ve mastered triggers and targets to drive acquisition, retention, attendance, and ultimately engagement.
Not another Cheerios!
We’re careful not to overwhelm your audience with too many triggers/targets and too much stuff. Our approach is to focus on the one thing of most value your members need to know. Consider for example Cheerios. At one time the Cheerios brand included 16 different varieties of basically the same cereal. Rather than increasing sales and brand loyalty, Cheerios experienced a decline in both areas. Their brand became watered down with too many choices, and their customers got lost in the clutter. Cheerios is now moving toward a less complex brand with fewer options. We believe associations should take a lesson from Cheerios, to simplify and focus on one core value proposition.
Why Rottman Creative?
Choose Rottman Creative as your engagement marketing firm if you want measurable outcomes—like increased attendance and engagement—based on neuroscience and a proven, codified methodology. We guarantee our discovery & strategy work, so if you’re not satisfied, you get your money back. Contact us to get started with your engagement marketing plan today.
Nowadays you can’t have a conversation about event marketing without mentioning digital. As part of the Engagement Assessment Survey, we asked association executives how they’re using digital tactics to enhance their membership, attendance, and engagement marketing. The results show that while tactics such as email are widely adopted, other digital marketing opportunities are underused.
Take a look at the survey findings below. Then consider how you might enhance your existing digital efforts or add a new channel to drive attendance and engagement.
Importance of Email Marketing Automation
Survey Question: How important is email marketing automation?
Email marketing automation is extremely or very important to a total of 71% of associations, according to the survey respondents. The remainder, over one-quarter, say it is somewhat or not very important. An additional survey question revealed that nine out of ten associations use an email service provider to execute their email automation.
Use of Video or Motion Graphics
Survey Question: Do you use video or motion graphics in any of your online membership or event attendance marketing?
Video in particular has emerged rapidly over the past few years as a key medium for communications and marketing, and today over half of associations are using video in some form in their membership and attendance marketing. The use of motion graphics is more limited. According to the findings, only 16% of associations use motion graphics currently.
Interest in Using More Video or Motion Graphics
Survey Question: What is your level of interest in using, or starting to use, more video and motion graphics in your marketing?
The level of interest in using more video and motion graphics in marketing is somewhat mixed. The survey found 47% of associations have a high or extremely high level of interest, although 40% say their interest level is moderate or somewhat moderate.
The main perceived challenges to using more video and motion graphics are by far budget and other resources.
How Video and Motion Graphics are Used in Marketing
Survey Question: In which areas do you use video and motion graphics related to marketing?
Video and motion graphics are mainly used on association or event websites; although 61% use some in social media posts. The findings show video and motion graphics are more often used as part of attendance marketing than membership development communications.
Your digital strategy
First things first. If you’re among the 29% of associations who are not using email automation, it’s time to get on the bandwagon. Email offers a relatively low-cost way to stay in touch with customers and prospects, build loyalty, and drive event attendance and engagement. Automating your email with help from an email service provider further streamlines the process without costing you significant time and resources.
If your email program is humming a long, you might consider adding video or motion graphics to your marketing mix. We know users engage more with visuals than with text, and they respond better to videos than static images. If you’re already using these tactics on your website, consider incorporating them into your social media posts, marketing emails, or event app. Get even more mileage by including videos and motion graphics in presentations or at your event itself.
Yes, budget is a concern when it comes to digital marketing. But video and motion graphics don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Consider setting up a story booth or appointing a roving reporter at your next event. For many member organizations, short, authentic video testimonials from attendees can be more powerful than expensive promotional segments produced and polished in a studio. Motion graphics are an affordable way to bring your existing library of photos and images to life with a little help from a motion graphics designer.
Next-level digital marketing
Once you have a solid foundation of messaging, videos, and motion graphics, you can put this collateral to use in social media marketing. Facebook’s latest advertising platform, Facebook Pixel, helps you use data-driven, personalized messaging to raise brand awareness, attract new audiences, and convert browsers into attendees.
It’s easy for associations, or any business really, to get lost in all the trendy, newfangled digital marketing opportunities. Don’t be daunted. Start with just three tactics—email, video, and motion graphics—then build on this foundation as your budget and resources allow. Digital isn’t going away. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you’ll attract more members and attendees and build engagement throughout the year.
Need help navigating the brave new world of digital event marketing? Contact us today to get started.
Attract younger members. Encourage repeat event attendance. Build passion and engagement among members. Change more lives. Every member organization faces these challenges and more when it comes to marketing for membership, attendance, and engagement. According to the Association Engagement Survey, most associations expect these challenges to continue. (A whopping 58% are pessimistic about the future of their events.)
Take a look at the survey results below that address common marketing challenges and the overall outlook for events. While it’s true these can seem like pretty daunting obstacles, everything’s not all doom and gloom. A fresh engagement marketing strategy can help you conquer these hurdles and keep your event growing and thriving.
Biggest Membership Marketing Challenges – Association Executive Quotes
Survey Question: What is your biggest membership marketing challenge?
Select responses from association executives:
“Attracting younger and more ethnically diverse members.”
“Continually demonstrating the value of an intangible product to potential buyers.”
“Conveying value of networking.”
“Engagement.”
“Finding prospects outside core membership.”
“Getting leadership to understand there are more pockets of potential members that represent different areas of the profession that have been overlooked in the past.”
“Knowing why people attend our meetings and figuring out how to attract new attendees.”
“Marketing to the youth.”
“Reaching members who are disengaged/transactional.”
“Redefining and persuasively communicating a robust membership value proposition.”
“Relevance and value proposition.”
“Retaining new/younger members and getting first time members to commit for more than just one year (those that join just to attend the annual meeting).”
“Retention after year two.”
“The right design to grab attention enough that a prospect is enticed enough to call about membership and review our programs.”
“Thinking of membership marketing as its own program.”
Biggest Audience Development and Attendance Marketing Challenges – Association Executive Quotes
Survey Question: What is your biggest event audience development and attendance marketing challenge?
Select responses from association executives:
“Convincing leadership to market/advertise outside of our in-house efforts.”
“Creating content that attracts a wide variety of attendees.”
“Engaging younger members to participate/attend.”
“Find out what their needs are and how we can improve our event.”
“Getting awareness of our events to people outside our membership.”
“Growing the audience and engagement.”
“Having so much for so many audiences and not being able to properly segment and target communications.”
“Having the time to implement a targeted marketing effort.”
“Helping people make the business case to attend.”
“Keeping them after the join as a result of attending a meeting. Engaging them with a local chapter and getting them to purchase other products/services.”
“Proper messaging — to register vs. once registered.”
“Reaching new audiences.”
“Understanding why people attend and figuring out how to get new attendees.”
The Growth Outlook is Mixed for Associations’ Largest Events
Survey Question: What do you see as the trend and outlook for large, leading association conventions, exhibitions, conferences, and other events in terms of growth and relevance?
Association executives disagree on the outlook for their largest events in terms of growth and relevance to their markets, although the majority are pessimistic. Consider that 39% say large association events are experiencing flat growth and have a stagnant outlook, and 19% say large events are getting smaller and are less relevant. On the other side, 28% have a positive outlook and say their largest events are growing. Lastly, 15% of the survey respondents are unsure about the outlook for growth and continued relevance.
How to conquer challenges
You might assume from these survey findings that events are losing relevance and fading away. But this is far from the truth. The real issue is that organizations aren’t proving the ROI of attending their events—and attendance and engagement suffer as a result.
Additional findings from the Association Engagement Survey indicate that many associations lack a clear acquisition and attendance marketing strategy—or they have a tired, worn-out strategy. Many ignore storytelling as a powerful engagement platform—even though it’s a proven winner. Other organizations know their value but lack a clear value proposition. These findings suggest that associations have plenty of opportunities to improve outcomes.
So what can you do? Let’s focus on that 28% of association executives who say their events are growing and thriving. These individuals prove that events can be successful. For your events to thrive, too, you need an effective engagement marketing strategy that demonstrates the value of your event. It starts with a clear value proposition. It also includes regular and relevant contact using compelling triggers and targets, curated member stories, and an authentic, human voice.
Overcoming challenges to improve attendance and engagement is well within your grasp. Contact us to get started crafting an engagement marketing strategy today.
Storytelling is a proven technique for sharing information, bringing people together, inspiring action, and exploring possibilities. Recently, neuroscientists have shed new light on this ancient platform. It turns out our brains engage more fully with stories than with information alone. We feel what the characters in the story feel—in both a tactile and emotional sense. This deep connection actually influences our behavior.
It only makes sense, then, that if you want to attract people to your event and encourage them to engage while they’re there, you should use storytelling. But, it turns out that many event marketers ignore this powerful marketing tool. The recent Association Engagement Survey reveals that only one-third of associations use storytelling in their event marketing. That means many are missing out on countless potential attendees as well as the contributions these individuals could make to their event and their mission.
Here’s the Storytelling Survey Questions and it’s Findings:
One-Third of Associations Use Storytelling as Part of Their Membership Marketing Approach
Survey Question: Does storytelling play a significant role in either your membership or event attendance marketing?
Thirty-three percent of associations say storytelling plays a significant role in their membership marketing, and 30% say they use this approach in their event attendance communications. Thirty-nine percent say they do not use any storytelling techniques currently.
Now, let’s switch gears slightly for a minute and consider this engagement question and its findings:
Event Attendees are Somewhat More Engaged than Many Association Members
Survey Questions: How would you rate your members’ engagement with your association overall on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 equal to the highest level of engagement? (And) How would you rate your attendees’ engagement with your association event on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 equal to the highest level of engagement?
The survey asked association executives to rate the level of their members’ and event attendees’ engagement on a 10-point scale. As the table shows, event attendees are considered to be more engaged. This makes sense as events often attract the most active members and important association management meetings are held in conjunction with the main programs.
How Storytelling and Engagement Work Together
Given the relatively low number of associations who use storytelling (about one-third), it’s not surprising that member engagement tends to be moderate to low and is only somewhat higher among event attendees. There’s room for improvement here! People need to be inspired to act, and one of the best ways to do that is through storytelling. Below is a sample story structure to get you started, along with some examples of where to use stories in your marketing.
Start Telling Stories
You likely won’t have any trouble getting those 8s, 9s, and 10s from the survey to attend your event and be engaged. However, most of your members and prospects will need some nudging to be inspired to attend and to be engaged while there. Your event marketing must prove that the value gained by attending is greater than the money, effort, and time it takes to get there. How can you do that? As the neuroscientists tell us, you can’t simply present a logical cost-benefit analysis. The numbers alone are just not inspiring or compelling enough to win over all those people rated a 5 and below. You need storytelling as part of a fresh engagement marketing strategy.
Begin with a compelling value proposition that proves the ROI of your event. Then collect curated member and attendee stories that demonstrate this value. Once you have stories, you can distribute them on the web, in email, on micro-sites, via digital marketing, and through direct mail to inspire and engage your base.
Need to increase attendance and engagement? Contact us today to add strategic storytelling to your marketing plan.
You’re probably investing significant time and resources to increase event attendance. Great! But are you also leveraging your event to increase overall membership? Do you know which areas of your conference and your marketing to enhance in order to drive attendance and member acquisition?
Rottman Creative recently partnered with Access Intelligence to find out how associations drive membership, event attendance, and engagement. The findings reveal a disconnect between what associations know about their attendees and how they use these insights to drive membership and attendance. Here’s a look at a few key findings we discovered:
Less than Half of Associations have a Clear Membership Acquisition Strategy
Survey Question: Do you feel your association has a clear membership acquisition and growth strategy?
Only 44% of association executives surveyed say their organization has a clear membership acquisition and growth strategy. And a similar percentage – 43% – say they do not have a strategy. The rest of the respondents are unsure if they have a clear strategy or not. The survey found similar segments of associations saying the same about their event attendance marketing approach: 46% say they have a clear event attendance marketing and growth strategy, 42% say they don’t have one at all, and 12% are unsure. These findings show many associations need to revisit their strategic plans. Many simply have their membership acquisition process on autopilot, following the same script year-after-year.
Most Associations are Missing Opportunities Tied to their Events to Increase Membership
Survey Question: Do you feel that your organization misses opportunities to increase membership related to your event attendance marketing and engagement? If Yes, please explain what’s missing:
Fifty-eight percent of association executives say their organization is missing opportunities to increase membership related to their event attendance marketing and engagement process. This is particularly an issue because one of the main goals of hosting events is to increase membership. Essentially over half of associations are saying a key aspect of their events is not effective, or at least would benefit from new strategies and approaches.
What’s missing? Here are select responses from association executives:
“Connection to membership value.”
“Focus is on attendance, not membership value.”
“Missed opportunity to promote association via social media, targeting a younger audience.”
“More targeted messaging to different demographics and groups.”
“No strategic plan. Staff resources limited.”
“We don’t have a complete marketing strategy.”
“We don’t use the most effective tool ‘word of mouth’ effectively.”
“We need to expand to a broader audience.”
Nearly 80% of Associations with Events Have a Good Understanding of Why Their Attendees Attend And What they Value
Survey Question: Does your organization have a good understanding of why attendees attend your events and what they most value?
Seventy-nine percent of associations with events say they understand their attendees’ motivations to participate in their events. This compares to 21% that do not have a good understanding of these motivations or say they are unsure.
Besides Growing Total Attendance, Associations use Events to Increase Membership
Survey Question: Which of the following best describe your overall attendance marketing goals for your largest, most important event?
It’s no surprise that most association events have a goal to increase attendance, but the other top goal is to use events to increase total association membership. Following these top two attendance marketing goals is to drive total exhibit-floor traffic and attendance numbers for exhibitors.
Enhance Educational Sessions is the Main Tactic to Achieve Attendance Marketing Goals
Survey Question: What has your organization been doing more recently specifically to reach event attendance goals?
To reach their attendance marketing goals, associations are mainly enhancing their educational sessions and providing more networking opportunities. The top three attendance marketing tactics found in the survey are: (1.) adding educational sessions, 57%; (2.) reviewing attendance marketing tactics and processes, 53%; (3.) adding networking opportunities, 51%.
What’s Next?
You likely have a good understanding of your audience and what they need and want. But if you find your organization among those without a clear strategy—or perhaps with a tired one on autopilot—it’s time to take action. It is tempting to add more educational sessions, different speakers, or more exhibitors. But first, let’s take a step back.
Members and prospects don’t want more stuff. They want measurable value. A savvy engagement marketing plan begins with an irresistible value proposition that proves the ROI of joining your organization and attending your event. Once you have a clear value proposition, you can build on it to drive membership and attendance with compelling engagement marketing.
Looking to increase event attendance and member acquisition? Contact us to help you develop a value proposition and a complete engagement marketing strategy.
Attendees don’t buy products (a.k.a your event). They buy outcomes. They don’t really care what you have to offer. They care what’s in it for them. If you can’t prove the outcomes of attending your event, your marketing will have to work much harder to drive attendance. It will cost you more time and money to get people to register. You will also have a difficult time getting people to engage during your event—no matter how many great things you offer.
When you promote your event you’re asking people to spend their M.E.T. (Money, Effort, and Time) to attend. In exchange for these three valuable resources, your attendees expect another M.E.T. in return, something Meaningful, Eventful, and Thought-provoking. But you need to go further. You need to quantify these ideas to show an actual return on investment.
Imagine if you could tell prospects, “Attendees on average see a $3000 increase in sales after they put our ideas to work.” Or maybe it’s, “Attendees save an average of $5000 on products and freight thanks to show-only discounts.” These real outcomes would be powerful reasons to register for your event—and to be engaged while there. An Attendee ROI Toolkit can help you craft a strong value proposition like these that proves the value of your conference and encourages attendance and engagement.
How much ROI is enough?
On average, your attendees should realize a return on investment between 3:1 and 5:1. That means if they spend $1000 in travel, lodging, and registration, they should see $3000 to $5000 in return.
Depending on your organization and your event, ROI might take one or more of these forms:
increased customer acquisition
boost in sales
efficiencies gained
costly mistakes avoided
deals closed
product or freight discounts
connections created or nurtured
free or discounted coaching, tools, or information products
free or discounted continuing education credits and certifications
While there will always be immeasurable benefits of attending your event, many of the items above are quantifiable. A little research will tell you how much consulting and seminars cost compared to your event offerings. Check in with vendors to see what show-only discounts they’re offering. Find out how much continuing education credits cost from other sources. Add up the monetary value of free tools and resources. All these data points will help you create a no-brainer value proposition to include in your toolkit: Attending our event will make/save you X in money, effort, and time.
How to assemble the ROI toolkit
You can further demonstrate your event’s value by asking prospects a series of questions that get to the heart of their unique situations. Start by walking them through their event-related expenses, from registration to travel, lodging, and food. Create a simple worksheet with a grand total at the bottom. This is your number to beat.
Demonstrating value is the more difficult portion of the toolkit. In fact, many conferences that already have an ROI toolkit fall short of showing actual value based on real data. You need to be so convincing that only a fool would say no. Stick to hard numbers whenever possible. And avoid silly or trivial items, such as “Free cocktail reception, $50 value.” Employers don’t send attendees to conferences for free booze.
Here are a few value-based questions to get your prospects thinking:
Connections
Who will you meet with at the conference?
Are there relationships you can initiate or cultivate?
Is there business you can close?
Challenges
What challenges are you trying to solve?
What resources does this event provide that will solve these challenges?
How much would you spend on these solutions (trainings, consultation, info products etc.) from other sources?
Opportunities
Does the conference offer discounts you plan to take advantage of? List the approximate savings if known.
Are there other opportunities in the conference city that you can leverage while you’re there (ex: site visits, client meetings, etc.)?
What resources does this event offer that you can’t get anywhere else?
These questions will help prospects (and their employers) see the tangible and intangible benefits of attending your event. To encourage repeat attendance, you might consider surveying past attendees to show actual ROI. Here are a few example queries:
How much did you save thanks to product discounts at the conference?
How much did you save on freight at the conference?
Did you receive any free tools or resources? What is their approximate value?
Did you notice an increase in sales after you implemented ideas from the event? How much?
Did the connections you made save you from making costly mistakes? How much did you save?
ex: switching service providers based on the recommendation of a colleague saved me $100/month.
Have attendees or prospects fill out the toolkit online. That way, you’ll not only convince them to attend in a convenient survey-style format; you’ll also gain a huge amount of information. From there you can craft strategic engagement marketing that will prove the measurable ROI of your event and its Meaningful, Eventful, and Thought-provoking value.
Benefits this year and next
As an added bonus, an ROI toolkit helps attendees come to your event primed and ready to engage. Since they’ve already anticipated what your event offers and how they will benefit, attendees are more likely to connect, learn, and engage. As a result, they are more likely to see maximum value from your conference AND register again next year.
Need an Attendee ROI Toolkit? We can help! Contact us to learn how you can ask the right questions to create an ROI toolkit that drives attendance and engagement.
Let’s face it. Attending your event is expensive. There’s travel, lodging, and registration costs plus time away from the office. Even if your event is really great, people might not attend because the costs are just too high.
You know your event offers so much value—so much education, career-advancing certifications, connection, and inspiration—that people would be foolish not to attend. Yet your numbers aren’t what they should be, and the people who do attend aren’t fully engaged. There’s a disconnect between the value you offer and the attendance and engagement you see.
So what’s an organization to do? You need to prove that the ROI of attending your event is higher than the cost. You need a value proposition to close the attendance and engagement gaps.
What a value proposition is
A good value proposition solves problems for your members and prospects. It overcomes impositions. It clearly illustrates the benefits of your event. A thoughtful value proposition that speaks to audience pain points sets you apart from competitors. It doesn’t “tell” why you’re better. It “shows” why you’re better using concrete data points.
What a value proposition is NOT
Don’t confuse a value proposition with a tagline, slogan, brand mark or conference theme. While these feel-good items can help you brand and market your event, they don’t show value or ROI. Similarly, a “Why Attend” letter that summarizes benefits and conference offerings is not a value proposition. This piece might come close to addressing your value, but chances are it lists too many “things” like sessions and networking opportunities. These things are not compelling enough to offset the costs of attending. You need more value.
Elements of a value proposition
If all this sounds a bit daunting it’s because you’re starting to see just how important a value proposition is to the success of your event—and to the sustainability of your organization. But don’t worry.
There are only three main elements to a good value proposition:
Advantage statement. Concisely state how people will benefit from attending your event. Be specific. If you have hard data, such as improved sales, money saved, and customers gained after attending, your value prop will be that much more compelling.
Substance claim. Tell people what you have to offer, to whom, and why. This will reinforce your value to members and quality prospects. At the same time it will weed out people who aren’t a good fit.
Hero image. The human brain processes images better than text. Create a unique visualization of your advantage statement to grab attention and encourage action.
Thought-provoking questions
To cover all the elements above, you have to ask the right questions. There is no substitute for knowing your target audience.
Here are a few sample questions to get you started:
What are attendees trying to get done at their jobs?
What obstacles keep them from getting it done?
What do you offer that will remove their obstacles or alleviate pain points?
What gains or benefits will they achieve by attending your event?
The answers to these questions will not only improve the way you market your event. They will also help you provide a valuable event experience that meets audience needs, solves their problems, and removes obstacles to their success. In other words, they will help you deliver on the promises in your marketing and fuel engagement at your event.
Have you M.E.T. me?
Your members and prospects spend Money, Time, and Effort to attend your conference, and they expect to see real value in return.
As you begin to craft your value proposition, consider these three questions your audience might have:
Money: Does the value I gain exceed my out-of-pocket costs of attending?
Effort: Is it worth the effort of leaving the office and traveling cross-country?
Time: If I show up and be present, will I be rewarded for my time?
If your conference value proposition does not answer these three questions with a resounding YES, then who will attend your event and engage with your organization? If you can’t demonstrate in your marketing that your event has measurable ROI, then people won’t come. If they do come, they won’t be present and engaged.
How to gauge engagement: The phone check
Your event attendance and member engagement are directly related to your ability to demonstrate your event’s value. Look around the conference floor at your next event. If you see too many people on their phones, it means they’re not engaged with you. Instead, they’re engaged with their technology. They are not present, and they won’t retain any of the information your events provides.
People engaged with their phones can’t see the value in your event (even though they were compelled to register and attend). You’ll have a hard time convincing these people to give up their money, effort, and time to attend next year. Your event—and your organization itself—will not be sustainable if people aren’t engaged. Your value proposition is the place to begin remedying this situation.
Need a value prop? We can help!
Rottman Creative has developed a series of questions to identify your audience needs and how your event will meet them. Once you answer the questions, we can help you develop a value proposition to prove the ROI of attending. Contact us today to get started.
Email marketing represents a big opportunity to drive event attendance and encourage engagement. As a platform for communication, it remains king across all generations. The recent Association Audience & Member Engagement Study shows that 56% or more of Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers, and Matures prefer email over any other channel. If you’re getting just ho hum results from your email, you’re missing out. Here are seven proven strategies to improve your email marketing to get attention, drive event attendance, and build lasting engagement.
1. Relevant Messaging
Effective messaging has only one specific trigger and one target per email. Triggers include your products, events, and special offers. Targets are whatever you want your members to do, like register for an event or make a purchase. Choose triggers and targets based on what you know about your audience and where they are in the buying cycle. Avoid blasting your audience with too many offers at once because people will get lost in the clutter and won’t take any action. Mastering triggers and targets drives acquisition, retention, attendance, and engagement.
2. Distinct Brand Voice
Developing a distinct and unique brand voice is essential to effective engagement marketing, in your emails and across all your platforms. Try a conversational, human tone to best reach members. It should be authentic and approachable. From there, neuroscience tell us that stories inspire more than facts. Consider adding curated attendee stories to your engagement marketing mix.
3. Free Resources
A little extra insight goes a long way when it comes to email marketing. We use www.subjectline.com to test the effectiveness of email subject lines before hitting send. We also use World Data’s B2B and B2C Email Marketing Calendar to identify top performing dates as well as the poor performing ones to avoid. For instance, the calendar suggests you should avoid sending promotional emails on Mondays and Fridays, when readership tends to be low.
4. Email Marketing Automation and Email Service Provider (ESP)
The Association Audience & Member Engagement Study shows that 72% of event marketers see email marketing automation as either extremely important or very important. However, many fall short in using automation to its full potential to generate, track, and score leads. Seize this huge opportunity by investing in improved email automation. (We’ll show you how!) Additionally, if you aren’t already using an email service provider—start today. An ESP can help you create, schedule, personalize, and track your campaigns more effectively than your in-house email system. It can also send a larger volume.
5. High-Quality List
Without a high-quality list, even the best marketers will see poor email results. Take a look at the date contacts were added to your list, the size of your list, and the number of opens and clicks. You could be experiencing poor deliverability if your email addresses are very old or if contacts haven’t opened one of your messages in six months or more.
If your list is too small, you might also be falling short of your full potential. To increase your email list, consider purchasing a list from a trusted provider. The best lists, however, are those you create yourself using one of these methods:
create lookalike audiences within Facebook and target ads to them
encourage current subscribers to share with friends and colleagues
offer freebies such as an e-book, whitepaper and webinars on your website in exchange for email addresses
When building your list, keep in mind that it is always easier to engage someone who already knows about you or is interested in what your organization offers. Think about it: It’s easier to sell salad dressing to someone who already eats salad!
6. Segmentation
Creating smaller, specific lists from your larger database is a proven best practice for more effective marketing. Segmentation allows you to send relevant messages to different audience members depending on their unique situations. You could segment based on any number of factors, but here are a few ideas relevant to event marketers:
last year’s attendees
members who have never attended
lapsed attendees (members who attended in years past but haven’t attended recently)
Once you establish your segments, you should tailor the language of your message to appeal to each segment.
7. Optimal Structure
Images, graphics, and a responsive layout can affect open and click-through rates—which are directly related to member engagement, brand loyalty, and event attendance. It’s a good strategy to start with a white background and a one-column format for your content area. Add compelling images to draw attention, and embed videos for increased engagement. Consider creating a standard masthead for your event to connect the dots among messages. For a more effective call to action, use graphics instead of hyperlinks.
No matter the content, it is absolutely essential that you create an adaptive and responsive email for a range of technology outlets. This will ensure that your message is powerful and professional whether a prospect views it on a desktop, phone, or tablet.
When done well, engagement marketing means connecting in relevant, meaningful, interesting ways with audiences who want to hear from you. If you can pull this off (and you can!) everything changes.* Not only will attendance and membership increase but members will be more engaged. People will put down their phones, they’ll be truly present, they’ll connect meaningfully with like-minded colleagues, and together they’ll dig in to make things happen for your organization. Your email marketing is a key component in driving this deep engagement before and during your event and all year long.
Footnote: “Engagement Marketing 101 (Redux)”, Marketing Daily, April 18, 2012
Meet Engagement Alice. She’s one of the profiles you might see after taking the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. If you’re an Engagement Alice, chances are you’re not meeting attendance goals, people aren’t opening your emails, and your website isn’t as sticky as you’d like. While you might feel a twinge of despair if you fit this category, don’t worry. You have tremendous potential to improve event attendance and member engagement. And we’ll show you how. Come on! A wonderland of engagement awaits!
Where to Begin?
Your first thought might be to increase the frequency of your marketing, update the look of your collateral, or add more speakers and certifications to your event. Not so fast. While killer event marketing and programming can help drive engagement, you ultimately won’t achieve sustainability unless you lay a solid foundation first. Let’s take a step back.
Clarity
The first step to increasing member engagement is to get 100% clear on the “why” behind your organization (NOT the “what” of speakers, certifications, etc). What is the purpose of your organization? More specifically, what is the ONE THING of most value that you need your members to know? If you aren’t clear on your purpose, your members won’t be either.
Strategy
Once you’ve established your “why,” you must clearly communicate it to your membership. You need a step-by-step engagement strategy of triggers (juicy offers), targets (calls to action), and tactics (emails, direct mail, etc.) that will light a fire in your members, encourage them to attend your event, and engage them to work together towards your mission.
In this stage we’ll take a look at your email marketing, social media strategy, web site, and other collateral to identify areas for improvement, tactics to add or subtract, timing, and your buying cycle. For example, are you sending the right messages when your members need to hear them?
Event Experience
Once you have a strong foundation, a clear purpose, and an effective engagement strategy, you must deliver an incredible event experience. Otherwise, your all efforts will have been wasted. It’s not enough to have continuing education credits, certifications, and notable keynote speakers. These are all things your members can consume without actually furthering the mission of your organization. You need to create an environment of high-quality connections and engagement to accomplish real outcomes.
Consider these ideas to improve event experience and create an environment that encourages engagement:
comfortable, inviting spaces for casual networking between sessions (Smell the coffee—and the inspiration—brewing!)
brain teasers, puzzles, and games scattered throughout your event to spark connection
engage the five senses: food, music, lighting, and signage should match the look and feel of your branding
special events to encourage high-quality connections: painting lounges, cooking lessons, and improv comedy workshops are just a few ideas
active outings to foster collaboration: rock climbing, go-carting, or a friendly softball game
a post-conference party on the last day to keep the momentum going long after your event is over
Engagement starts with inspiration
You can’t push people to do anything—that simply doesn’t work. Great marketing and events pull people in. They inspire and compel passionate individuals to come together for a common purpose. They encourage members to be present, participate, and get down to the business of changing lives through hard work and dedication. Your organization can achieve this level of engagement. In fact, you can’t survive without it. So how do you get started?
Take the Engagement Assessment
Find out where you rate on the Engagement Scale. Once you know where you are in terms of engaging members, we can help you craft a plan to increase event attendance and member engagement AND achieve long-term sustainability for your organization.
There’s an old saying, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” If attendance and engagement are low, they’ll stay low unless you make a change. Don’t wait for another event to flop before taking action. What’s more, once you achieve engagement your event attendance, membership acquisition, and retention rates will take care of themselves.
Join us on a journey down the rabbit hole to find out what you can do to drive attendance and engagement starting today.
Meet Luke Brandwalker, one of the profiles you might see when you take the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. If you’re a Luke, the forces of connection and engagement are strong in your organization. You event is well attended and members really dig in to achieve breakthroughs in your industry. Chances are good, however, that you see a lot of gray hair when you look around the room. How can you foster engagement and sustain your organization into the future? You need the Millennium Falcon…er…Millennials. You need Millennials. And we know how to find them, engage them, and sustain your organization for decades. Hop in! We’re off to a galaxy not so far, far away.
Kids These Days…
We know, we know. Everybody is talking about Millennials. It’s almost like we’re observing a new species or dissecting aliens from another planet. The perception is often that “young people these days” aren’t as dedicated, driven, respectful, or productive as past generations. Or “back when I was young” things were different. Millennials just can’t seem to put down their phones long enough for a “real” conversation. They’re lazy and entitled. They can’t keep a job…The list goes on.
You might not be thrilled at the prospect of engaging with these lazy, entitled hooligans. But writing off the next generation will cost you big. If you don’t learn how to communicate with Millennials and, more importantly, ENGAGE them, your organization can’t survive. A closer look at just who Millennials are—and the significant value they can bring to your organization—is the key to your future sustainability as an organization. Ignore them at your peril.
Why Millennials might just be your ideal members
Pew Research defines Millennials as anyone currently 18 to 34 years old. At 86 million strong, they’re the largest generation in the U.S. and the largest share of the American workforce. They have some powerful common traits you can definitely put to use in your organization.
They’re driven by passion, not profits. We know that for your event to be successful, you need people to feel compelled, inspired, and engaged—not forced or motivated and not driven by “stuff” they can acquire. About 60 percent of Millennials are entrepreneurs, and many identify as social entrepreneurs. That means they work to positively influence the world even if it means making less money as a result. They’re really not “entitled,” many faced a tough job market right out of college and were forced to make their own way in the world. Imagine if you can harness this drive for your organization.
They care about community.
Sure, Millennials tend to have a better work-life balance than their parents, but that’s because they value community, family, and time for recreation and creativity. They’ve come of age in a time where busting butt at the office isn’t rewarded with overtime pay, a pension, or even job security. They’re happy to put in their 9 to 5 day, but then they’re off to an after-work activity or event (maybe yours).
They’re drawn to companies that give back.
About a third of Millennials say they will boycott a company based on their convictions. That means if you can’t prove your value and resonate with their worldview, you’re out. However, Millennials prefer to associate with companies and organizations that have a culture of giving back. (Not a bad fit for your life-changing mission, right?) They value authenticity, so an annual day of volunteering isn’t going to cut it. They want to see real change over the long term. If you can effectively communicate your purpose and value to this crowd, they will get engaged and stay there.
They love technology.
I can hear you saying that this is not a positive attribute. But just think for a minute…Millennials are the most tech-savvy generation to date. More than 85 percent own a smart phone, and they rarely put it down. They even sleep near their phones! They’re also socially connected, with an average of 250 Facebook friends each. All this adds up to countless opportunities for you to engage them 24/7—via email, apps, mobile advertising, YouTube, or social media. And when you do reach them with relevant content, they can share it with hundreds or thousands of people faster than the speed of light.
The problem with Millennials
As you might now see, “the problem with Millennials” is largely one of misunderstanding. Don’t mistake differences in values and communication preferences for negative character traits. The truth is you need Millennials, and the sooner you understand them—and how to engage them—the sooner you’ll see attendance numbers, engagement, and goal achievement increase at your event, throughout the year, and into the next decade.
Take the Engagement Assessment
Ready to defeat the dark side and solve your gray hair dilemma for decades to come? Find out where you rate on the Engagement Scale. Once you know where you are in terms of engaging members, we can help you craft a plan to increase event attendance and member engagement AND achieve long-term sustainability for your organization.
Meet Christopher Connectus, one of the profiles you might see after you take the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. Like the famous explorer who came before him, Christopher seeks new horizons and untold treasures. He knows his purpose. He even set out in the right direction. But this Christopher hasn’t quite reached his destination…yet.
If you’re a Christopher Connectus, you probably have an established brand, clear purpose, and a solid membership list. But you might be falling short when it comes to opens, clicks, event registration, and repeat attendance. It’s time to fine-tune your strategy and your marketing communications to reach the New World of engagement. Come on! We’ve got the map!
What are Triggers and Targets?
To move interested parties through your buying cycle—from being aware or interested to actually taking action—you need compelling triggers and targets in your marketing communications. Triggers might be your products, events, and special offers. Targets include whatever you want your members to do, like register for an event or make a purchase. Mastering triggers and targets drives acquisition, retention, attendance, and ultimately engagement. To get started, follow these five steps:
1. Review your past email or direct mail campaigns.
Make a list of any triggers (or offers) you used in the past.
Your list of triggers might include:
continuing ed credits or a certification program
in-person workshops or online webinars
pre-conference sessions
networking events
pricing promotions, like group discounts or early registration specials
keynotes, lunches, outings, or other conference offerings
2. Ask yourself if your audience really cares about the items on your list.
Are they exclusive to your organization? Are they so compelling people will take action to avoid missing out? Add or subtract items to your list based on where you members are today—in terms of their careers as well as where they are in your buying cycle. For example, do you have a compelling trigger for a new member who is not very familiar with your organization? If not, you might add a new member orientation trigger. Don’t worry if your triggers only apply to some of our audience. You can always segment your list later.
3. Tell people what you want them to do.
Once you’ve established your unique triggers, you need to compel your audience to act on them. For this you need targets. If you don’t tell people what to do, they will do nothing, and your campaign/event/membership/engagement will suffer as a result.
Here are five common targets for event marketing campaigns:
Register
Sign-up
Tell someone else (word of mouth)
Visit the website
Make an inbound inquiry
4. Identify the most effective tactics to deploy your message.
For a lot of Christophers, direct mail and email are proven standby tactics. Consider social media, including video content, to build engagement around your brand. If you master these tactics, move on to next-level ideas like microsites or virtual reality experiences.
5. Consider WHEN people will be most interested in your triggers and targets.
Focus on two types of timing: event related (before, during , and after your conference) and the buying cycle (new member, first-time attendee, brand ambassador, etc). It’s also important to consider the frequency of your communications. Generally, people will need to hear from you regularly over a period of time before they’re moved to act.
What Does This Have to do With Engagement?
If you want a successful event that inspires people to connect and work hard to change lives, you have to get them there in the first place. The only way to do that is to create compelling marketing messages that move and inspire people to act. But that’s only part of the solution. You need people to care. They need to be fully present at your event. You need momentum to carry you through the entire year. You need pilgrims who return year after year to be uplifted.
Effective triggers and targets show your base that you know them and care to serve their specific needs. They prove you have killer event offerings and a community of people who can help them achieve their goals. They also show your brand personality, the human side of your organization, which is what people really connect to. Ultimately, solid marketing convinces people of your value, not just of the “stuff” they can snag at your event. If you can’t prove your value, engagement can’t happen.
Take the Engagement Assessment
Ready to explore the New World of engagement? Find out where you rate on the Engagement Scale. Once you know where you are in terms of engaging members, we can help you craft a plan to increase event attendance and member engagement AND achieve long-term sustainability for your organization.
Introducing Julius Seizer, one of the profiles you might see after you take the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. If you’re a Julius Seizer, you rule at engaging members and driving event attendance, but chances are you struggle to break the acquisition and retention cycle. Your event might be full of first-timers and tourists, who come to consume your offerings and leave without furthering your mission. For long-term loyalty, repeat attendance, and overall sustainability you need to boost engagement. It’s time to seize your current momentum, build on existing strengths, and make some important tweaks, particularly in the area of high-quality connections. Carpe diem! Let’s get started building your engaged empire today.
What is Engagement?
We know engagement is more than just “showing up.” It’s about more than attendees. You need participants, volunteers, mentors, contributors, and word-of-mouth marketers. You need members to set aside their phones and their everyday tasks so they can focus on your event and the value they can give to it and get from it. You need individuals who are compelled from within to take action, work together, and tackle the hard stuff that leads to success in your field. And you need everyone to come back next year and do it all over again. So how can you reach that level of sustainable engagement?
Interestingly, the way to achieve engagement isn’t by adding more programming, speakers, certifications, and other “stuff.” It isn’t by having the best food or the coolest venue. Yes, of course, you need high-quality offerings to have a great event, but all these things will come to nothing if people don’t connect.
Hardwired to connect
It turns out human beings are hardwired to connect. When we connect we feel engaged. But not just any connection will do. Psychologists tell us there are two types of connections: high quality and low quality. High-quality connections allow us to fully express ourselves, they withstand setbacks, and they open us up to new possibilities. They also spark action and creativity.
Event marketers need high-quality connections for lots of reasons. Here are just a few:
attract and retain new members, even millennials
break the acquisition and retention cycle
build loyalty and encourage advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing
increase productivity and creativity to achieve goals and work towards your mission
drive engagement that sustains your organization for decades to come
If your event suffers from low attendance, poor feedback surveys, lack of engagement, or general lack of progress, you probably have too many low-quality connections. Even if your event is well attended this could be the case. Low-quality connections kill engagement, close minds to new ideas, and actually damage your organization.
How to build high-quality connections
Building high-quality connections (and eliminating low-quality ones) might sound daunting. The good news is that, as a Julius, you already have a well-oiled machine to help you. A few tweaks will get you on your way to connection and engagement. Try these four items for starters:
Boost your brand experience.
As we mention above, you do need a killer brand experience to attract people to your event in the first place. As a Julius Seizer, you’re doing a lot right in this area. Focus now on ways your event can help people connect. Do you have comfortable seating for casual networking? Do you have interactive sessions, like roundtable luncheons or panel discussions? Do you have a new-member orientation to welcome first-timers into the fold? Consider adding an online component to connect members before, during, and after your event—event-specific hashtags, online forums, or LISTSERVs are just a few examples.
Spread the word.
Consider energizing your marketing communications with more compelling triggers and targets to raise awareness, reassure the interested, and prove the value of your event. If your marketing is limited to email and direct mail, consider adding a channel or two. Social media, microsites, print collateral, virtual reality experiences, and YouTube can all help your members connect with each other, your organization, and your mission.
Time your communications with the buying cycle.
Your organization already has fantastic tools and resources that your members can use to change more lives. It’s up to you to connect each member with the help they need WHEN they need it. Strategic pre-conference communication not only gets members in the door; it shows your value and helps them see why they’re there. And don’t stop communicating just because your event is over. Maintain momentum and engagement throughout the year with regional events, active social media use, and regular progress updates.
Let your hair down.
Build engagement with a culture of authenticity, openness, and vulnerability. You can encourage authenticity with storytelling, idea sharing, group activities, and unscripted networking events. Unlike relationships, high-quality connections can occur in an instant—like in the hallways between sessions. If you build a culture of openness, you’ll increase the number of opportunities members have to connect with one another on really meaningful levels. Compare this to forced networking that simply encourages people to exchange business cards. Which one sounds more promising for your organization’s goals?
Motivation vs. Inspiration
It’s hard to convince or motivate anyone to do anything. For real engagement, your members need to be internally compelled and inspired to take action. High-quality connections entice members attend your event year after year and contribute while they’re there—not because they need a certification but because they might miss out on valuable interactions with their friends and colleagues. If you foster high-quality connections engagement will follow, and your event attendance, member retention, and goal achievement will all take care of themselves.
Ready build engagement and sustainability? Take the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment to see where you rate on the Engagement Scale. From there we’ll help you forge a plan to rally the troops, engage your loyal followers, and sustain your empire for decades.
Introducing Clark Kentington, one of the profiles you might see after taking the Rottman Creative Engagement Assessment. Clarks come to us with at least some foundation to build on. They might be a startup with a clear mission but no strategy. Maybe they’re an established organization who needs a fresh approach. Perhaps they have a great event that nobody attends or emails nobody reads. For lots of reasons, the Clarks aren’t achieving their full potential, but they’re ready to make changes to get there. If you fit this category, it’s an exciting place to be! From here you can flex your marketing muscles, boost engagement, and rescue yourself from another ho hum year. We’ll show you how.
Where to Begin
We talk a lot about Clarity, Energy, and Spark—and for good reason. If you don’t have a clear mission, a savvy engagement strategy, and an exceptional event experience your organization will not thrive. In fact, it might not even survive. But how exactly do you develop these key items?
How to define a clear mission
When your organization was formed, the founders had a clear purpose. Over time that mission might have gotten crowded out by “stuff” like webinars, speakers, certifications, and networking events. Today you know WHAT your organization does, but do you know WHY? Do you know the ONE thing of value you offer to your members?
To find out, you need to strip away all the stuff—the continuing ed credits, the keynotes, the seminars. These are all things that members consume without actually engaging in the mission of your organization. This is not sustainable. Take a look at these example missions for inspiration:
teach people how to be leaders
ensure no child goes hungry
achieve breakthroughs in cancer research
challenge the status quo
enhance childhood development
To truly engage, you also need to know your members. Who are they? Why do they join? Why do some attend every year while others come once and never return? Formal and informal investigation can shed some light on this for you:
What are members talking about on social media? in focus groups?
What did they say on your last post-event survey?
Who are they? (ex: age, gender, demographics, job title, years of experience, etc.)
What do they care about?
Which archetype do they fit into?
Simon Sinek tells us “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Steve Jobs said, “Marketing is about values.” Walk through these steps to clearly identify your mission (just the ONE), and you’ll find your “why.” Engagement begins with a clear purpose. Without clarity, the rest of your efforts will fail.
How to create an engagement strategy that actually works
After clarity comes energy. Your strategy is your energy source, the engine that drives engagement (and thus, attendance, acquisition, and retention). It’s fueled by your clear purpose but, in addition to the “why” we discuss above, your strategy must also take into account your buying cycle. It’s not enough to have great messages and campaigns that articulate your mission. These items must be aligned with the buying cycle to foster engagement.
The first stage of the buying cycle is raising awareness. If you’re a Clark Kentington, chances are you’ve got this stage covered. You have a database of members and interested prospects. But this list itself isn’t worth much. For real value, you need to move to the next stage of the buying cycle: engaging the interested. Imagine what your organization can achieve if you rally all the troops around your mission. With the right strategy, the possibilities are endless.
One or two campaigns and a handful of social media posts is not an engagement strategy. Interested parties need to hear from you multiple times—at the right times—before they’re compelled to take action. (Notice they’re not being “convinced’ or “motivated.” Your job is to ENGAGE them to want to take action.) We will help you identify objectives, craft a strategy, and determine timing based on your annual conference and other industry events.
Along with proper timing, it’s essential to tailor your communications to audience needs. A new member requires more information about your event than a repeat attendee, for example. A C-level executive needs different offers than an entry-level employee. You can achieve an added layer of precision in your communications by segmenting your audience and tweaking your messages accordingly.
How to spark action with killer brand experience
Your event is your mission brought to life. Here, too, the goal isn’t attendance numbers or a certain dollar amount; it’s connecting passionate individuals so they can change more lives. Read more about how to craft powerful sensory event experiences here. The big idea is to create an environment that encourages high-quality connections and engagement by incorporating all five senses. Do this, and the numbers will take care of themselves.
Take the Engagement Assessment
Ready to step out of the phone booth and soar to new heights? Find out where you rate on the Engagement Scale. Once you know where you are in terms of engaging members, we can help you craft a plan to increase event attendance and member engagement AND achieve long-term sustainability for your organization.
When we talk about your audience’s level of inspiration, we’re really talking about how engaged they are.
Do members just show up for your event…or are they fully present? Do they simply pay dues every year…or do they actively work towards your mission? If your members are not engaged, your organization will eventually cease to exist.
While you might have a sense that your members are engaged (or not), you can actually measure engagement using tangible data points. What you discover can help you improve your marketing, events, and the sustainability of your organization.
Here’s an idea of what you can measure to determine engagement levels:
total number of members
attendance at your annual event and percentage of members who attend
when and where people register (early bird, on-site, etc.)
email open and click-through rates
Google Analytics on your website
YouTube subscribers, Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook likes and shares
Reasons why members attend/perceived value of your event
Member satisfaction with events and programs
A word of caution: Don’t mistake quantity for quality. A high rate of retention, for example, is not necessarily indicative of high engagement. Members might renew year after year because they get something—access to a directory, continuing ed credits, or discounts on certifications. None of these “things” sustains your organization or encourages members to work together to achieve your goals. High retention rates are a good start, but if you don’t inspire and engage your base, your organization can’t survive.
Along the same lines, the above metrics don’t carry equal weight when used to measure engagement. Email opens, for example, are important but not as telling as, say, clicks or social media shares when it comes to actively engaged members. Learning how to put a value on each data point can help you more precisely measure member engagement.
So where to begin? The Engagement Assessment will help you measure your engagement in terms of attendance, email and online presence, social media interaction, member satisfaction, and more.
Once you know where you are on the Engagement Scale, we can help you form a strategy to improve your score, build on existing strengths, or work on sustaining your organization for the next generation.
If you’re interested in how other associations with conferences are working to increase engagement, click here to take a short survey. In exchange for a few minutes of your time, you’ll receive a copy of the report and a sample marketing plan at no cost.
After the Assessment: Next steps to improve your marketing
You found out how your organization ranks when it comes to creating an engaged membership that actively works toward your mission. You looked at attendance, your event experience, email, social media, and your website. Now what?
Now the exciting part begins! Now we can use where you are to help you get where you’re going. Whether you scored high or low on the Engagement Scale, chances are there’s something you can do to improve your event experience and the way you market it. The ultimate goal is a sustainable organization of engaged, passionate members working together to achieve big things.
Attendance
Examining attendance numbers can help you break the cycle of acquisition and retention. How many people attend your event? Are they members or non-members? How many are first timers? Analyzing who registers can identify opportunities and timing for targeted, emotionally engaging marketing. It can help you plan your spark (a.k.a. your brand experience) to facilitate high-quality connections (1) between members.
When people register can hint at the perceived value of your event. If most of your registration happens during the early bird discount period, it’s an indication that members undervalue your brand experience. If many people register onsite, you may need to create more compelling offers to encourage advanced registration.
A look at repeat attendance can indicate member engagement and willingness to work toward your organization’s goals. If most of your attendees are first-timers, that’s a sign you’re not retaining attendees year after year. You may need more compelling speakers, special events, unscripted networking opportunities, and certifications to create more pilgrims and fewer tourists. You may also need to better explain the “why” behind your event, in addition to the “what.”
Event Experience
Is your conference viewed as the must-attend event in your industry? Are people excited and engaged while they’re there? If not, don’t worry. There are lots of ways to up your event experience and its perceived value.
What do attendees see and hear upon entering your conference? Do the food and drinks contribute to your brand’s personality? Is there comfortable seating for casual networking between sessions? Deliberately plan every detail to engage your audience in the emotional center of the brain, where 90% of decisions are made.
That might mean adding an ice cream social or a night at the ballpark instead of a forced networking event. It might include a video booth for capturing testimonials. Perhaps some of your sessions can be restructured as roundtables or panel discussions for increased engagement. Also think about relevant promotional items that can extend the shelf life of your marketing.
When it comes to substance, you want top-notch leaders with big ideas to keynote your events. Your sessions should address real issues your members face. The best way to know what members want most is to connect regularly through surveys, online forums, focus groups, interviews, and social media. What keeps them up at night? Which certifications do they need? Having excellent, irresistible offerings will compel and inspire attendance, rather than trying to motivate and push people to register.
Email
Email “blasts” are a thing of the past. A more effective approach is to create specific, compelling triggers (juicy offers) and targets (desired action) based on defined audience segments. You can use your current open and click rates as a baseline from which to measure your improved results—and to gauge your campaign performance compared to other organizations who hold events. (More on increasing the success of your email marketing in a future post.)
Social Media
It’s great to keep an eye on your social media followers, likes, and shares. But if you truly want an inspired, engaged audience, you need to encourage conversations and high-quality connections. Regular social updates with images, video, and relevant content can raise awareness, reassure interested parties, encourage engagement, and build long-term loyalty as part of your larger marketing strategy. A conference-specific hashtag can build excitement around your event. Keep the conversation going by responding to comments. Social media is an especially effective tactic for connecting with tech-savvy millennials. It’s well worth your time and resources to create a dynamic social presence for your organization.
Website
Your website represents a huge opportunity to engage members and encourage them to take action. But you’ll have to go beyond a one-sided presentation of information. Inspire members and prospects by emphasizing the “why” vs. the “what” of your organization, focusing on a clear mission, adopting a minimalist approach to text, and engaging emotions with storytelling. A responsive, adaptive design is most effective for reaching people across devices. You can use your current metrics of visitors, page views, time on site, and bounce rates to measure your progress.
Take the First Step
It’s easy to feel discouraged if you think you have a long way to go on the road to engagement. But, really, you should be excited and encouraged. Improvements in any one of these areas can have a major impact on your member acquisition and retention, event attendance, and overall engagement of your members. Each step you take contributes to building a vibrant membership that’s willing to work toward your mission and explore new possibilities for your organization.
Ready to take the first step? Let’s get started!
(1) Dutton, J. E., & Heaphy, E. D. (2003). The power of high-quality connections. Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline, 3, 263-278.
The perfect scenario for your organization: Your event attendance and membership are at all-time highs. Attendees are engaged and eager to connect. You’ve broken the cycle of acquisition and retention. Your members are so passionate about your mission that they tell others about your organization. You’re growing sustainably and changing more lives than ever…
Not there yet? That’s okay! You are not alone. Most associations with events are challenged to increase attendance and engagement.
Chances are your members and prospects are engaged on some level. But how much? Is it enough to sustain your organization into the future? And how might you move closer to this perfect scenario from wherever you are right now?
Our proprietary Engagement Assessment will ask you questions to help you rank your event’s performance.
The Engagement Assessment
It turns out, engagement is a knowable and measurable thing. We’ve developed an Engagement Assessment specifically for member organizations that regularly hold member events. Why do you need engagement? So you can improve attendance, build more excitement around your event, and drive stronger membership acquisition and retention. These targeted questions will help you identify your association’s score on the Engagement Scale.
Once the Engagement Assessment reveals your current level of engagement, you can better judge which areas of your marketing you most need to strengthen. No matter where you’re starting, we have resources to help you create a strategic engagement marketing plan that’s focused on outcomes.
Where Are You Right Now?
If you’re lost on the highway, you can’t head in the right direction until you know exactly where you are. The Engagement Assessment can help you find out where you are in terms of engaging and inspiring your membership. It subdivides the engagement-generating capabilities of your event category by category to identify your pain points and get you on the path to solving your most pressing issues. The assessment is completely free. If you need assistance from there, we can help you create a roadmap to get you where you want to be. Heck, we’ll even put gas in the car. C’mon. Get in! Let’s go find engagement.
Click here to take the free Engagement Assessment. You’ll have it finished in less time than it takes you to get a coffee at Starbucks. Based on your score, you’ll gain access to resources that can help you inspire your members, break the acquisition and retention cycle, and build lasting engagement. If your score reveals there’s room for improvement, just imagine the possibilities! If your score suggests that your association is strong and your members are highly engaged, you can build on that to sustain your organization for the next generation.
Millennials. You know you want them. They’re young, they’re tech savvy, they’re socially aware, and they’re eager to work for a meaningful cause. Snag Millennial members now and you’ll have a passionate, inspired base for decades to come. But just how can you gain and retain more Millennial members? Start by knowing your audience.
Who Are Millennials?
The folks at Pew Research classify Millennials those currently 18 to 34 years old. At 86 million strong Millennials are the largest generation in the U.S., and they make up the largest share of the American workforce. This group is the most educated generation in American history. It is also the most diverse, with 42 percent identifying as non-white.
About 60 percent are entrepreneurs. They’re making their own way in the world following the economic collapse and poor job market they faced out of college. Many Millennials identify as social entrepreneurs who work to positively change the world and give something back—even if it means making less money as a result.
Millennials are more connected to technology than any previous generation. More than 80 percent have a Facebook account with a median of 250 friends. About 85 percent own a smart phone, and they use apps over general web browsers by a ratio of 2:1. Many Millennials communicate via texting or online chat, even with their parents. They’re also more likely to sleep near their phones! Mobile and social marketing are huge areas of opportunity for marketers who want to reach this group.
What Do They Care About?
Millennials tend to be socially aware and prepared to act. Seven in 10 see themselves as social activists. Four out of five say they’re more likely to purchase from a company that supports a cause they care about. Three in four believe corporations should create economic value for society by addressing its needs. Additionally, about a third will boycott businesses based on causes they care about.
Millennials demand authenticity. They are drawn to organizations with socially responsible initiatives, but only if they’re genuinely doing good for people and not just for show. For example, a company should go beyond a single day of volunteering or writing a check to charity. Millennials prefer a culture of giving back and want to see actual results. (Not a bad fit for your life-changing mission, right?)
Among causes important to Millennials is environmental responsibility. Millennials are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products. They take buses and bikes more often than other generations, and they tend to work for environmentally responsible companies.
Millennials also value community and family (perhaps the result of moving back home during the recession). Their quality of life includes earning a living wage, but they also value time for recreation. Many cite the need for creativity in their work.
Know Your Base Specifically
Now that you know a little more about Millennials in general, up your marketing game by looking specifically at your own members and prospects. Here are just a few ways to get to know your younger base:
assemble focus groups
conduct feedback surveys after your event and throughout the year
track the results of your marketing promos to determine which offers, visuals, and messages resonate with this segment
perform demographic or data analysis
monitor attendance at specific events, workshops, and sessions to determine topics of most interest
capture attendee stories and experiences with a video booth
You don’t need hard data to know your Millennials. There’s a lot to be said for simply paying attention at your event. What are people talking about? Where are they spending their time between sessions? What questions are they asking at the Q & A? This abstract information-gathering can provide tremendous insight on how to serve your younger members.
Next Steps for Gaining and Retaining Millennials
Being a purpose-driven organization means you’re already a good fit for Millennials. They’re eager to make a difference in the world, and your organization can help them accomplish this. It’s a matter of connecting the dots: Raise awareness among Millennials, connect them to other inspired individuals, and continually reinforce your value through clarity, energy, and spark (a.k.a. your mission, strategy, and brand experience).
Awareness and HQCs
Simple as it might sound, one way to have more Millennial members is to go out and get them. Visit universities, speak to young professionals groups, purchase mailing lists based on age, and target the children of your gray-haired members. Once you get their attention, encourage high quality connections (1) through online forums, social campaigns, new member orientations, mentorships, or volunteer opportunities. Reassure their interest with inspiration:
Be Clear In Your Mission
Research shows Millennials like to see an organization focused on one specific mission, rather than spreading resources too thin to make a difference. Focus your mission, then clearly communicate it to your Millennials. Explaining the WHY behind your organization, not the WHAT, is especially important to this young generation.
Have Energy In Your Strategy
Use technology to your advantage. You can’t ignore social and mobile. Keep in mind most Millennials access the world via their smart phones, mostly on apps. Traditional advertising might not work. Maybe it’s time your organization had an app. Maybe you need a YouTube channel. Once you determine your triggers and the desired target actions you want your Millennials to take, consider a tech-savvy tactic for delivering your message.
Ignite the Spark Through Brand Experience
In addition to great sensory brand experience, consider a philanthropic or eco-conscious component to your event. This could be as simple as adding recycling bins to your event space or choosing promotional items made of recycled or reusable materials. Take it one step further and organize a river cleanup or longer term project that gives back to your community.
Why You Need Millennials
Millennials represent an ideal type of member for your organization. They are young and have the potential to be members for decades. They’re already inspired to change lives, willing to work toward a cause for personal fulfillment, and eager to connect. You just might have to text them to get their attention.
(1) Dutton, J. E., & Heaphy, E. D. (2003). The power of high-quality connections. Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline, 3, 263-278.
Imagine your event is THE place for connecting—for meeting like-minded individuals who are open to new ideas, ready to work together to change lives, eager to mentor others, and excited about new possibilities for your organization. Imagine your members faithfully attend year after year, and they tell others about your life-changing mission. They even bring Millennials. Imagine event attendance and membership are at all time highs…These wonderful things are the results of inspiration and high-quality connections, or HQCs. The sooner you connect people for productive, inspiring, uplifting purposes, the better off your organization will be.
What are High-Quality Connections?
Certain connections are just plain better than others. Some people lift us up while others drag us down. Some people put us at ease while others put us on edge. Psychologists distinguish human interactions as either high-quality connections, HQCs, or low-quality connections, LQCs. HQCs allow us to fully express ourselves, they withstand setbacks, and they open us to new ideas. In simpler terms, HQCs are strong, powerful, and sustainable. Much like inspiration, they make us open to new possibilities at the same time they spark action and creativity.
Here are just a few reasons why you need HQCs:
attract and retain new members, including Millennials
break the acquisition and retention cycle
build loyalty and encourage advocacy
increase productivity and creativity to change more lives
sustain your organization for decades to come
Dutton, J. E., & Heaphy, E. D. (2003). The power of high-quality connections. Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline, 3, 263-278.
LQCs by contrast kill inspiration and engagement, close our minds to new ideas, and leave damage in their wake. Consider how just one “bad apple” can destroy team morale in the workplace. Now think about how lots of these LQCs might affect the success of your event—in the form of poor attendance, lack of participation, failed networking events, and more.
HQCs vs Relationships
HQCs are not the same as relationships. Relationships are close bonds between people and include family, friends, and partnerships. They’re a powerful source of information, social support, and even health. But relationships are formed over long periods of time, and most people have relatively few truly meaningful relationships in their lifetime—perhaps as few as six. It’s simply not practical for your members to forge relationships in order to reach their goals and work towards your organization’s goals. You need action now.
HQCs can be created in an instant—in the hallway between sessions, for example. These micro-moments are defined not by their length of time but by their positive regard, mutual benefits, and sense of possibility. Luckily, people have room for lots of HQCs in their lives.
How to Build High-Quality Connections
Now that you know you want them, let’s talk about how to get them. Here are four pathways to forging HCQs with and among your base:
Be Engaged.
When members are engaged, they’re truly present at your event. They listen and participate, volunteer, teach, mentor, and contribute. They don’t just come for a certification and leave. You can encourage engagement with a killer brand experience at your event, and you can continue to engage throughout the year through your marketing. Communicate regularly with compelling triggers and targets. Broadcast emotionally engaging success stories and major milestones. Consider conducting feedback surveys or focus groups so you can continue to deliver what your members need most.
Enable Goals.
Your organization already has the tools, the people, and the knowledge to help your members achieve their business goals and change more lives. The trick is to make sure each member gets the help they need when they need it. Raising awareness is a good first step. For example, if you have a special session for CEOs, send them a personal invitation. Consider a new member orientation to help first-timers take advantage of all your organization has to offer. Don’t let connectivity end on the last day of your conference. Host regional events or maintain active online forums so members can help each other throughout the year.
Be Authentic.
Unless members are their true, vulnerable selves, HQCs can’t happen. Authentic storytelling is one way your organization can foster a culture of openness and vulnerability. Any forum that incorporates idea sharing is another (ex: panel discussions, roundtable luncheons, and Q&A sessions). Also consider unscripted networking events that allow members to let loose a little. A cocktail hour, golf outing, or game night might provide an arena for authenticity.
Enable Teamwork.
Connect inspired individuals to make even more magic happen! Consider creating an online forum before your event with different groups for CEOs, entry-level associates, or first-time attendees. Launch social media campaigns with event-specific hashtags. These pre-conference virtual meetings can help people connect better and faster in person. Interactive sessions at your event can facilitate teamwork by grouping people based on a particular issue they would like to solve. Incorporating a community project into your event can also build a spirit of teamwork.
High-quality connections are an essential part of the Inspiration-ConnectionDuality™. Humans are hardwired to connect, and we connect to feel inspired. As a purpose-driven organization you can fuel that basic human need and harness it to achieve your goals. Imagine the possibilities of creating HQCs among hundreds of inspired individuals!
Are you ready to tap into the power of HQCs? Let’s get started!
The words motivation and inspiration are often used interchangeably to mean “something that makes someone want to do something,” (seriously, that’s Webster’s definition). At Rottman Creative, we think there are important differences between these ideas. You need inspiration—not motivation—to drive event attendance, inspire brand attachment, and reinforce high-quality connections (1).
Motivation
Motivation involves an external force nudging someone to take action. It’s often a short-term state of being, and the end result is a given objective. For example, you might be motivated to lose a few pounds because your pants are too tight. Your members might be motivated to attend your event because they need continuing education credits to keep doing their jobs.
The trouble with motivation is that when the nudging stops, so does the action. Once your pants fit, you abandon your diet. Once your members get their CCE credits, they stop attending your event. They aren’t called to work toward your mission or advocate for your organization. They get some “stuff” and then they go away.
Inspiration
Inspiration, on the other hand, involves being called from within to a higher purpose. It’s often long lasting, and the end result is personal fulfillment. Compared to our pants example, you might be inspired instead to adopt healthy habits so you can live longer. Your members might be inspired to go from attendee to presenter or mentor.
Inspiration is a win-win: Members get things that improve their businesses and their lives at the same time they work toward fulfilling your mission and improving the lives of others. This scenario is far more powerful and beneficial over the long term than simply selling a one-time certification or workshop.
How to Inspire
For your organization, inspiration is better than motivation because it opens members to new possibilities, enables goal attainment, and fosters long-term brand loyalty and advocacy. In more practical terms, members who are inspired go beyond simply paying dues or showing up for your event. They set aside their phones, engage in mutual idea-sharing, actively participate, and tell others about it in person or through social media.
Inspired members strengthen and sustain your organization. Here’s what you can do to move from motivation to inspiration:
Tell Stories
Success stories inspire because they show us what’s possible. Sharing a past attendee story demonstrates to your other members that they can achieve similar growth, success, connectivity, etc. (Brain research supports this idea that stories, not facts, move people.)
For your organization, tap into the experiences of past attendees whose lives have been impacted by your event. Did they make a connection that skyrocketed their success? Did they solve a particular challenge by attending your conference? Broadcast these stories before, during, and after your event to foster inspiration on a brain-deep level. Read more about the power of storytelling.
Communicate Regularly
Even pilgrims go to church on Sundays. While inspiration comes from within, your members will still need to be kept aware of special offers, annual events, and any important accomplishments of your organization. Stay in touch throughout the year with a mix of marketing tactics: Newsletters, promotional emails, direct mailings, and sharable content can encourage action and advocacy.
Foster Brand Attachment
We know that emotions—not facts—drive most decisions. When members are emotionally invested in your organization they attend repeatedly, tell others, serve on committees, and achieve milestones. Research tells us that brand attachment is the single most important indicator of whether a person will buy a brand. Read more on how to create brand attachment.
Encourage Connectivity
When your members feel connected, they are compelled to attend your event year after year—not because they need a certification but because they might miss out on valuable interactions with their friends and colleagues. Planned/forced networking doesn’t necessarily lead to high-quality connections that inspire your members. Sometimes the most meaningful connections happen over coffee or in the hallways between sessions.
Consider how you might encourage connectivity through unscripted networking at your event. Lounge areas with comfortable seating, an outing offsite, an ice cream social, a photo booth, or a game night are just a few ideas.
Motivated members might pay dues and even register for an event. But after they get what they want, these tourists will be gone and you will be back on the acquisition and retention rollercoaster. Inspired members, however, are compelled from within to help your organization achieve goals and pursue new horizons. They spread the word about the great
